In UP, a record: maximum vote, minimum violence

With electoral violence being passé, enthusiastic young and women voters helped Uttar Pradesh to record its highest ever voter turnout of 60%. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 4, 2012, 02:09:17 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

With electoral violence being passé, enthusiastic young and women voters helped Uttar Pradesh to record its highest ever voter turnout of 60%.

Voters-wait-to-cast-their-votes-at-a-polling-station-during-the-final-phase-of-Uttar-Pradesh-assembly-elections-in-Moradabad-district-PTI-Photo

It meant two crore (or 30%) more people came out for voting in 2012 as compared to 2007. If the Election Commission statistics are taken into account, majority of them were young and women voters. Around 60% of women voted as compared to just 42% in 2007.

“It was because the elections were held in totally peaceful and in free and fair manner,” said chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, in-charge of last elections before his retirement in June.

India’s political battlefield, Uttar Pradesh had traditionally recorded low voter turnout, except the elections post Babri Masjid demolition in 1993, when 57% polling was recorded.

The lowest ever polling recorded - 38% - was in the first assembly elections in 1951 and remained in mid-50s till 1974. Thereafter, less than or half of the total voters turned out for elections till 1991.

“There was nine percentage point increase in voting percentage in 1993 because as an aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition,” said an independent election analyst Pushpash Pant.

2012 had beaten all records with a 14 percentage point increasing in polling since 2007 and five time dip in poll related crimes.

“Not a single person was killed in poll related violence in Uttar Pradesh,” Quraishi said.

No case of clash between supporters of political parties was reported and less than 100 incidents of poll related crime was reported from the state as compared around 500 in 2007 elections, said election commission officials.

The police detained over 76,000 people and executed non-bailable warrants to over 26,000 people. Around 61% of the total licensed weapons were deposited with police.

Not just rural areas, even urban centers in UP such as Lucknow, Mathura, Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar witnessed voter turnout higher than 60%. Firozabad district recorded the highest increase from 44.33% to 64% and two districts - Saharanpur and Lalitpur - recorded more than 70% polling.

Pant said voting pattern showed that people from all caste and communities came out in large numbers to vote. Till 1990s, voting percentage of dalits, women and backwards were very less, which has seen an upward swing.

Highest polling years
2012: 60%
1993: 57.13%
1996: 55.73%

Lowest polling years
1951: 38.01%
1957: 44.77%
1980: 44.92%

Fact file
* Total voters in Uttar Pradesh: 11.91 crore
* Total assembly seats: 403
* 60% women turnout as compared to 75% men
* Two crore additional votes polled in 2012, more than total votes polled in Punjab.
* Reason: voter awareness campaigns such as 152 km long human chain in Ferozabad and 500 km relay race in Mainpuri and incident free polls.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.