Watch Nidhi Razdan: What does a low turn out in phase 1 of India election indicate?

Gulf News

The world’s biggest democratic exercise kicked off on the 19th of April with the first of India’s 7 phase general election getting underway. But days later, India’s Election Commission, which oversees this mammoth task, was huddled in a meeting worried about a significant decline in voter turnout.  Read the full story here:  https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/heatwave-or-voter-fatigue-reasons-for-low-turnout-in-indias-phase-i-voting-1.102335488  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #India #politics

Transcript

00:00The first phase of India's seven-phase general election happened on the 19th of April.

00:09And data shows a worrying trend for the Election Commission as well as perhaps for the BJP.

00:14The EC is worried because the number of people who came out to vote this time in phase one

00:18was more than 4% down from the last time in 2019.

00:21Now, there could be various reasons for this, and experts don't entirely have a consensus

00:26on why this has happened.

00:28One could, of course, be the weather, because large parts of the country have very high

00:32temperatures at the moment and are under a heat wave.

00:35However, it's also important to point out that for several cycles now, the Indian general

00:40election has been in the months of April and May.

00:43So the heat wave and the high temperatures don't entirely explain this phenomenon.

00:47The reason the BJP is worried is because a large section of the party fears that their

00:53own cadre and their own voters are taking Modi's third term for granted, that they

00:58are simply therefore not really mobilizing and coming out to vote because they think

01:03it's a done deal.

01:04And that could be a sense of complacency, which could really hurt the party.

01:08There is a third theory as well, that a lower voter turnout may also indicate that those

01:14who are in the opposition camp also sense that the BJP is going to come back for a third

01:19term and therefore are not coming out to vote in enthusiastic numbers.

01:22Similarly, many fence sitters also are not really moving out because they don't really

01:28see any alternative to the BJP at the moment and aren't enthused by the opposition.

01:34Like I said, there's no consensus on this, but the Election Commission is trying to get

01:38more and more people to come out and vote.

01:41And it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the remaining phases, because in the

01:44past, the first phase has normally set the trend for the rest of the phases in India's

01:50general election.

01:52So will a low turnout indicate perhaps something that the opposition camp should worry about

01:58or the BJP?

01:59Let's see on the 4th of June.

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