First time voters hold balance

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Enarada -  mathihalli madan mohan

ENARADA, Hubli 

By Mathihalli Madan Mohan

A record number of newly enrolled first time voters and the political debutant Aam Admi Party (AAP) hold all the aces in the political battle for ballots between the Congress and BJP for the 28 loksabha seats in Karnataka, for which the poll will take place on Thursday the 17th April.

Karnataka has witnessed unusual flurry of enrolment in the electoral rolls, with record number of 25 lakh being registered within one year, of which 15 lakhs walked in within three month period preceding the polling day. The average increase of voters for all the 28 loksabha seats from Karnataka is around 90,000, the highest being 2.74 lakh in Bangalore North to  51.000 in Kanara parliamentary constituencies.  Barring ten parliamentary constituencies, where each of them had a lead of over one lakh votes over other in 2013 assembly elections, the differences between the BJP and Congress comes within the ambit of the average increase in voters in at least 14 parliamentary constituencies. Whatever may be the poll turn out; this is one segment of voters who would not be missing the maiden opportunity to cast votes, since they have deliberately enrolled themselves for the purpose.

EN Graphics 16-4-2014

If the new voters turn out to be part of the undercurrent of Modi wave in Karnataka, the balance will tilt in favour of the BJP enabling to retain the same number of 19 seats  (plus or minus one) it had won  five years ago, notwithstanding the  reverses it had suffered in the 2013 assembly election.

If, on the other hand, they are part of the Kejriwal phenomenon who has proved that higher voter turnout can bring political changes, and plump for AAP, which is an underdog in the Karnataka electorate, whose presence has been hardly taken cognisance by the media, then nothing may happen to Congress but the BJPs game of raking maximum seats from Karnataka gets spoiled.

The question of new voters veering towards the Congress simply does not arise, since they are known to be basically antiestablishment.  Moreover in Karnataka, the anti-incumbency factor operates against the Congress at two level, the Centre and the state, with the one year old Siddaramaiah government hardly doing anything to convert the negative votes into positive votes for Congress.

EN Graphics

All along, BJP was the only political alternative available to the new voters in Karnataka, which happened in the three assembly elections of 1999, 2004,2008 and 2009 loksabha elections. (2013 assembly elections was a little different. The BJP got its quota of increase, while the other claimants like Congress and JDS got the benefit).

But this time, the entry of the AAP, in the electoral scene has put spanner in the pro BJP proclivities of the new voters. Besides the flurry in the enrolment is a product of the Kejriwal phenomenon of Delhi and hence AAP cannot be treated as an unknown political entity.

And hence the claimants for attention of the new voters have been two instead of BJP being exclusive recipient of attention in the past.

On the basis of the political balance evident in the 2013  assembly elections, the Congress has a lead in as many as  16, the BJP in 10 and JDS in 2  parliamentary constituencies and give plus or minus two, it can expect to chalk out victory in about 14 constituencies in the minimum, even without any additional support.

But if the new voters plump for BJP as it used to  be done in the past, nine of the constituencies where the Congress is in the lead, would undergo change to advantage of the BJP, which would help the party to retain the plus or minus one of the total of 19 seats it had held in 2009.

But if the new voters turn their attention to AAP or even share their largesse equally between AAP and the BJP, the latter’s goose is cooked, with the Congress emerging as the party winning the largest number of seats, pushing the BJP to the second position. In the four parliamentary constituencies in and around Bangalore namely Bangalore Rural, Bangalore North, Bangalore Central and Bangalore South, there is a total of 7.29 lakh new voters. If all of them gravitate towards the AAP, the BJP’s prospects of upstaging Congress will go awry and BJP’s national leader from Karnataka, Mr Ananthkumar will be in problem.

The prospects of the new voters looking towards the JDS, the  third political party in Frey are not bright, since  it is known that the party not a favorite of the voters in the parliament election and is prone to suffer from the erosion of support instead getting any accretion to its base.

(Posted on April 16 , 2014 @ 9:45 pm)

(Author is a Senior Journalist and Columnist.   He can be contacted on  Mobile: +91 94480 74872 / Email:madan.mm@gmail.com)

The views expressed on the website are those of the Columnists/ Authors/Journalists / Correspondents and do not necessarily reflect the views of ENARADA.

1 COMMENT

  1. A Software Powerhouse ?

    Yesterday , when I went to polling booth , there was a chaos , with a number of people complaining that their names were missing from the Electoral Rolls ( Voter Lists )

    As per news-reports , in Mumbai alone , some 50,000 people returned home without casting their votes – including Deepak Parekh ! Altogether , names of some 15 lakh voters ( out of a total of 98 lakh ) were missing !

    Then there are some 300 million people who will simply won’t walk down to the nearest polling booths , and wait for 1 hour to cast their votes ( – assuming that some 40 % of the 814 million eligible voters do not exercise their right to vote )

    WHY ?

    Going out to vote is becoming a big hassle

    COULD IT BE OTHERWISE ?

    Sure , if Central Government and the Election Commission care to implement my suggestion for developing a mobile App for voting . I called it , VotesApp

    see .. hemenparekh.in/2013/08/votesapp.html

    Or , just type in Google , ” VotesApp ”

    HOW WILL IT HELP ?

    > No need for 930,000 polling booths / EVMs / Ink / Papers etc
    Every voter’s own mobile becomes a miniature EVM !
    Any registered Voter can vote from anywhere in the World !

    > Nor any need to deploy 1,100,000 people to conduct the polls

    > No need for millions of Police / Military personnel

    > No need for months of advance preparations, across entire country

    > Voting can be completed in just ONE day – instead of over 6 weeks –
    and results can be declared next day !

    > Voting could be 95 % or more !

    > No worry for booth-capture

    > No bogus voting ( Bio-metric ID from built-in camera )

    > No duplicate voting ( Self-destruct after single usage )

    > No worry for any terrorist attacks

    > Enormous saving of time for Voters

    > No need to declare a public holiday – costing thousands of crores
    worth of production

    > Central Government will save, at least , Rs 2,000 Crores .

    If business-friendly BJP government comes to power , it would not
    hesitate to earn Rs 20,000 crores , by enabling 15 million Indian
    businesses to advertise to 814 million voters , thru this mobile VotesApp –
    sharply targeting by Gender / Age / Marital Status / City / Street /
    Education / Income Tax paid / Employed or Jobless ..etc

    > No need for Central Government to stop taking even routine decisions

    If a tiny country like Estonia ( population 1.6 million ) can elect its Members of Parliament thru a VotesApp type mobile App , why can’t we ?

    Already 900+ million Indians have mobiles – all of which , will soon become Smart Phones

    And we call our country , a ” Software Powerhouse ” !

    * hemen parekh ( 25 April 2014 / Mumbai )

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