KL Report
SRINAGAR
Kashmir’s voter percentage in the respective population is lower than Jammu, a Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) survey in 2014 summer said. The situation has not changed in ongoing assembly polls.
This apparently is because the people in Kashmir skip registering as voters for the last many years.
“The analysis of the EP ratio shows that all nearly districts in Kashmir division have low EP ratio,” the report said. “District Kupwara in the state is having a very low EP ratio of 0.40, whereas, district Jammu in the Jammu division shows the highest EP ratio of 0.62 as compared to other districts of the state.
In Kashmir division, Srinagar had the highest EP ratio of 0.62 followed by Shopian with 0.59.
The exact EP ratio in J&K is slightly problematic. “..in the state of J&K, there is heavy deployment of army and paramilitary forces who are also counted during the census but cannot be enrolled as voters in J&K,” the SVEEP report said. “The forces constitute about 3.3% of the total population.”
That is the main reason why SVEEP puts the EP in the state at 57.50 percent and not at 60.85%. There might have been some improvement between the Lok Sabha polls in mid summer and the ongoing assembly elections.
Given the chronic incidence of staying away from polls, after the last well-participated 1987 assembly elections, Election Commission had carried out a survey to understand the issue. There were only 15.86% respondents who did not vote because they lacked faith in the electoral democracy. This group was only next to 16.52% respondents who lacked an electoral photo ID card. Interestingly, 14.98% had their names missing in the electoral rolls.
Trying to find the reasons for non participation, the survey found apathy responsible for 18.50% cases and anger responsible in 37.01% cases.
Against a population of 12541302 (as per 2011 census), J&K had 6933118 voters registered at the time of the Lok Sabha polls. The numbers of voters had reached 7225559 when the Election Commission of India issued a notification on October 25. Officials in state electoral office said there could be some variations in numbers because of some additions in the subsequent days.
But there has not been major change in the EP ratio on regional basis. In October, Kashmir had voter population of 3753195, Jammu had 3311438 and Ladakh 160926. That meant Kashmir had the lowest EP ratio in all the three regions. Jammu topped with 61.88%, Ladakh had 55.39% and Kashmir had only 54.33%.
