New Delhi: The very first phase of voting in the Lok Sabha 2024 election has led to questions on the Election Commission’s performance thanks to a significant difference in turnout figures for Tamil Nadu within the course of four hours, which is roughly the time that the poll body took to release figures.
According to a report by The New Indian Express, the Chief Electoral Officer, Satyabrata Sahoo, released the provisional figures of voter turnout for the state, on April 19, at 7.30pm. It was 72.09%.
Within four hours, at 12 am on April 20, the EC had revised the figures to 69.46%.
Some constituencies, the report said, had recorded a variation from seven to 13.5 percentage points, leading to serious concerns.
The report says that the earlier figure, from the poll day, was based on projections from data of a sample of polling stations. The figures of early April 20 were based on actual data from all polling booths, collected and registered by the Returning Officers of the assembly segments on the EC’s online portal Encore.
A report on Deccan Chronicle notes that the Chief Electoral Officer cancelled two press conferences on Saturday, the first at 11 am and the other at 1 pm. Finally, he announced the same figures of 12 am at 7.30 pm.
The final booth-wise turnout figures were not released until Saturday night, TNIE reported, with Sahoo noting during the presser that data entry for each polling station was still underway.
Overall, the EC reported a tentative figure of voter turnout across 21 states and Union territories at over 60% at 7 pm.
The ECI has still not released the final voting percentage for phase 1. At 9:45 pm on April 19, the ECI said that the average voting percentage for all 102 constituencies that went to polls on April 19 was 62.37%, but added that it wasn’t the final figure.
Based on that, political scientist and former psephologist Yogendra Yadav said the lower turnout, and a drop of almost 8 percentage points, reflects not only absence of enthusiasm on the ground but also a lack of a Modi wave. After crunching the seat-wise turnouts, he said that there was a substantial drop (nearly 6%) in turnout in seats held by the NDA and only a 3% drop in those held by non-NDA parties. He believed that the lower turnout in phase one means that almost 76 lakh voters who had voted in 2019 did not exercise their votes in 2024.
’12 days for VVPAT?’
Questions over the EC’s delay with numbers come amidst concerns over the poll body’s words on voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) authentication.
Former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan pointed out on X that the EC has told the court that it will take 12 days to count all VVPAT slips.
Gopinathan has pointed out that by the EC’s own admission, it would take an hour to go through every VVPAT machine. “Currently ECI uses only one of the tables to count VVPAT slips out of the 14 tables in the counting hall. Use all 14 and you get 14 VVPATs per hour. And results in 24-36 hours with no additional resource requirement,” he has pointed out.
Currently ECI uses only one of the tables to count VVPAT slips out of the 14 tables in the counting hall. Use all 14 and you get 14 VVPATs per hour. And results in 24-36 hours with no additional resource requirement. pic.twitter.com/8mRo229u1b
— Kannan Gopinathan (@naukarshah) April 19, 2024
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The Supreme Court last week reserved judgment on a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs. The Wire has reported on how experts have questioned some of the arguments put forward in court, pointing out that several pertinent suggestions were overlooked and facetious issues discussed instead.
Analysing the EC’s new FAQ section, expert Venkatesh Nayak had written for The Wire that the levels of transparency that the EC has adopted are hopelessly inadequate to meet the high standards that the Supreme Court has set for our right to know as citizen-voters.
