The astoundingly high polling percentage in Assam, 82.2 per cent in the revised figures put out by the Election Commission on Tuesday, has foxed both the Congress and the National Democratic Alliance in equal measure, though leaders of each camp are claiming it as their victory.
Sarbananda Sonowal, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, termed it a strong vote for change, while Anjan Dutta, the State Congress president, said the vote was incontrovertibly for his party as “no one can vote for an alliance that is as full of contradictions as the NDA is”.
In party strategy meetings after the first phase of polling, however, there seemed to be bemusement and confusion over the overwhelming response from the voter and a lack of a real sense over just what the turnout meant. “Frankly, it is a question of ground-level work by party cadre; we have to see which are the seats where the turnouts have been huge,” said a senior central leader of the BJP, who is part of the party campaign in Assam.
Bhanu Joshi of the Centre for Policy Research, who has been travelling, along with a few members of a team tracking these polls, across Upper Assam down to some areas in the Barak Valley, said the turnout was a result of many factors. “This has been a hugely polarised election on the question of identity, sub-nationalism and citizenship. We found as we travelled from Upper Assam to parts of Barak Valley, a real fear among people that if they didn’t vote this year, somehow, their names would be struck off the voters’ list,” he said.
“When I asked a Bengali-speaking mason why he was travelling to Silchar, he said that he wanted to cast his vote. Otherwise ‘they’ would ‘throw’ him out,” he said.
An imperative“The other side of the polarisation is that many people also feel that this is an election where it is imperative to express your view. This directly weaves in with the strength of party structures in these areas. For example, in certain constituencies, the Congress’s party structure at the booth level has been mobilised in a great way and seats that may have slipped away will probably be won by them. The RSS too has been active for many years in Assam, and have gradually built up otherwise low-key festivals such as Bol Bhum (similar to Kanwariyas in north India) in a big way, and have mobilised votes,” he added.
Historically, high percentages of voting have not proved anyone’s case. A study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies looking at the period between 1990 and 2008, covering 110 elections, shows this very clearly.
In 66 elections where the incumbent government was thrown out, the turnout was up in only 28, remained the same in 20 and declined in 18. In the 44 elections where the government was returned to power, the turnout was up in 14, same in 17 and decreased in 13.
Despite the crystal-gazing, parties will have to wait for May 19, when results are declared, to make sense of this extraordinarily high exercise of franchise by the Assamese voter.
