This year though, the Election Commission of India hopes women and migrant workers will help the state breach the 60% mark. There are two factors at play – 300,000 migrant workers have registered as voters in the last few months and the gender gap among voters has closed from 875 in 2015 to 898 as on date.
This year though, the Election Commission of India hopes women and migrant workers will help the state breach the 60% mark.
New Delhi: Bihar last clocked a voting percentage of over 60% in the year 2000. Ever since, the state’s polling percentage has stayed consistently around 56-58%. This year though, the Election Commission of India hopes women and migrant workers will help the state breach the 60% mark. There are two factors at play – 300,000 migrant workers have registered as voters in the last few months and the gender gap among voters has closed from 875 in 2015 to 898 as on date.
Nearly 300,000 migrant workers registered as voters recently, with 38 districts accounting for the new registrations, and the poll panel is pulling out all stops to get them to actually vote next month.
The key point to note is that while 300,000 newly registered migrant voters may look like a small number in a 70 million voting population, nearly 1.88 million migrants have returned to the state, as per data shared with the ECI by the state’s disaster management department. Around 1.66 million of these are aged over 18 and hence eligible to vote.
Gender voting There is also a special focus on getting the women among the shifting migrants to vote.
“Entire families came back to the state amid the lockdown. Besides registering the migrant workers as voters, a special effort has been made to ensure that the women- workers…who have returned with them also be registered as voters. Block-level officers have, in fact, been sent to the house of every returning migrant with the voter registration form to ensure it is done,” a senior ECI official told ET.
Bihar is one of the few states where women have come out to vote in greater numbers than men since the 2005 assembly polls.
Women voter turnout was 54.85% in the 2005 polls versus 50.70% for men. In 2015, that moved up to 59.92% women who voted against 54.07% men.
With the voter list gender gap closing - from 875 in 2015 to 892 in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and at 898 in 2020 - there is hope that more women will choose to exercise their franchise.
Constituency-wise figures There is also a deeper, constituency wise watch on voting.
Records since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar show that the voter turnout ranged between 50% and 60% in about 170 of its 243 constituencies.
In fact, there is only one constituency that has posted a 70% voter turnout consistently - Thakurganj assembly constituency in Kishanganj district.
Kasba and Barari are also among constituencies with a higher turnout. There is also hope in the 65-70% voting turnout range. Against just eight constituencies that had a 65-70% voter turnout in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, there were 22 of them in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
From 38 constituencies with a voter turnout of 60-65% in 2014, people in 60 constituencies stepped out in higher numbers in 2019.
In contrast, Digha, Bankipur and Kumhrar, in the vicinity of Patna, have had the lowest voter turnouts in 2015 polls, at under 45%.
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