Apr 30, 2024 08:32 AM IST
The state’s highest turnout of 78.41% was recorded in Vatakara constituency in north Kerala where a fierce two-cornered fight between UDF and LDF
Kerala recorded a voter turnout of 71.27% in the April 26 Lok Sabha polls across the state’s 20 parliamentary constituencies, the latest update of the Election Commission (EC) stated on Monday, indicating a decline of 6.5 percentage points in the final polling figure from the 2019 turnout of 77.84%.
According to the EC data, of the 2,774,9158 eligible voters in the state, 19,777,478 persons exercised their franchise. Women, who outnumber men in the state’s population, also polled more votes than the males. While 9,475,090 of the voters were men, 10,302,238 were women.
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The state’s highest turnout of 78.41% was recorded in Vatakara constituency in north Kerala where a fierce two-cornered fight between United Democratic Front’s (UDF) Shafi Parambil and Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) KK Shailaja played out in the polls.
The lowest turnout of 63.37% was recorded in Pathanamthitta constituency in southern Kerala, which was witness to a triangular contest between incumbent UDF MP Anto Antony, LDF rival and former finance minister TM Thomas Isaac and BJP’s debutant Anil K Antony.
There were region-wise disparities in the turnout figures. While constituencies in north Kerala saw relatively high turnouts such as Kannur (77.21%), Wayanad (73.57%) and Kozhikode (75.52%), all five in southern part of the state saw less than 70% polling. Thiruvananthapuram, which was the cynosure of all eyes at the national level for the fierce contest between UDF’s Shashi Tharoor and NDA’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar, saw a paltry turnout of 66.47%. In 2019, the turnout in the constituency was 73.45%, an increase of 7 percentage points.
In terms of gender, women outnumbered men in voting in 18 of the 20 constituencies of the state. The exceptions were only in Kottayam and Idukki where a marginal higher percentage of male voters were seen. The highest number of women voters and the biggest difference between male and female voters was seen in Vatakara constituency. Women formed 54% of the total number of those who voted on April 26. Of the 1,114,950 who voted, 607,362 were women and 507,584 were men. The turnout while remarkable is not surprising since the contest was between Parambil, a 41-year-old leader of Congress and one of the party’s popular youth icons, and Shailaja, the state’s former health minister and CPM’s prominent woman face.
Compared to the 2019 polls, the turnout in this election in Kerala has come down by over 6 percentage points. Several factors are being cited by political experts and leaders for the decline in polling such as absence of a ‘clean’ voter list, the prevailing extreme heat conditions, lack of enthusiasm on the part of youth to take part in the democratic process and dissatisfaction with alleged slow voting process.
J Prabhash, former professor of political science at Kerala University, held that while the turnout was less than 2019 polls, it could still be considered as a decent one. “If it had gone below 65%, then yes, we could have said the turnout was bad. But in this case, it’s still above 70%, so it’s decent. However, yes, there has been a decline when compared to the last Lok Sabha polls,” he said.
“One of the factors I believe for the decline was that the electoral list was not clean. The names of those who had died and others who were absent in the state for long periods have not been cleared. Another is that a lot of young people have stayed away from the democratic process for different reasons. Many of them may have migrated abroad, especially in districts like Pathanamthitta, and not returned during the vacations this year as travel tickets are quite expensive,” he said.
