THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, May 21: It was a kind of ‘poll anaesthesia’ in the Palamu Lok Sabha election.
It is 3 per cent less voting in 2024 than in 2019 when Palamu had polled little over 64 percent.
There is no point in drawing any consolation that other Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand have also not fared well in terms of voting.
No catchy poll slogan
This poll anaesthesia has all the ingredients. The big one came from the political parties. There was a pall of poll gloom all around. No one heard any catchy poll slogan of any political candidate. The campaigning by the poetical contestants was most subdued. The visibility of the poll campaigner was dim.
SVEEP needs to be redefined
On the administrative front, SVEEP needs to be redefined now. Votathon, walk for vote, rangoli, hackneyed sloganeering etc should be dropped. It’s all a waste of time.
All awareness programmes on more and more voting kept males at the centre while the fact of the matter is that it’s women in the family who goad men to go out and vote.
Awareness campaign for women was missing in Palamu and where it was even done, it was just a cosmetic treatment and not above any tokenism. It ought to have been a vigorous exercise.
Voters maintain self-imposed isolation
The public or voters just maintained a self-imposed isolation from the electoral procedures. There are political reasons more of it.
First, the vernacular media went on with double-decker headlines of the quotes of the politicians of the INDIA bloc that this may be the last general election that the country is going to have. Many just refused not to disbelieve it.
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BJP floated ‘400 Paar’
On the other hand, the BJP floated ‘400 Paar’ and it boomeranged upon its cadres coming from the Dalits who feared that their party could change the constitution and they could not be a party to it.
A Dalit BJP supporter said that the BJP did a political harakiri by giving this 400 Par ka Nara as it went a kind of ordering the voters to cast their votes only for the BJP. A large number of voters of the BJP just sat idle.
2014 election was fought by the BJP on its slogan ‘Ache Din Aa ney Waley Hain.’ It saw the Congress routed.
PM Garib Kalyan Yojna beneficiaries
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election there was the huge sea of the beneficiaries of the PM Garib Kalyan Yojna who scripted victory for the Narendra Modi. There was no Modi wave at all in 2024. The beneficiaries remained largely at home and didn’t come to vote.
The general feeling created and fanned by the political parties was ‘It’s up to you to Vote if you like’. Here the role of the returning officer Shashi Ranjan and SP Reeshma got limited and restricted.
The masses just had this feeling of getting disowned by the political parties and that made them sulk and they stayed out of the voting.
Rural voters
It was not only the urban apathy that saw a considerable dip in voting in the urban areas.
The rural pollscape was equally not charged. It acted or reacted slowly. Palamu had 2427 polling stations for its Lok Sabha seat and there was no booth where there was no footfall of the voters. Even one booth at Untari Road had few scores of polling. But the zeal for voting was missing. It looked like more a pained duty to the voter than a joyful participation.
However, the general scene was like a poll etherized in Palamu.
The civil and police administration here led by the returning officer Shashi Ranjan and SP Reeshma and her teams of officials did try to pull out all stops for a maximum voting but the outcome remained to be desired more.
Chunao Pathshalas
‘Chunao Pathshalas’ and ‘Master Jee’ parachuted here from above but just couldn’t do anything. ‘Ur Chali’ may be sensually attractive to the love escapades but not to the voters here in Palamu.
Palamu administration has to screw its lazy booth-level officers who be asked to explain as to why Voter Information Slip was not a 100 per cent distribution. It is mostly a 55 to 65 percent distribution. Why?
The Jharkhand Story correspondent spoke to a cross-section of voters who outright said this voter information slip never reached them.
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Postal voters’ turnout
Palamu set a kind of record for the postal ballot. It was smooth and swift. The turnout was very impressive. Its nodal officer Anurag Kumar Tiwary and his team did a good job.
Equally important was the teamwork of the nodal officer of the Karmik Koshaang Kundan Kumar who is the additional collector as such was the precise deployment of the human resources for the voting that there arose no confusion anywhere.
On the police front, the deployment of the security forces by SP Reeshma Ramesan was flawless. There was no single booth where men in uniform or ladies in uniform were not around.
Jharkhand state chief electoral officer K Ravi Kumar whose ‘monsoon of meetings’ ahead of the voting here for 4 constituencies on May 13 and 3 constituencies on May 20 had a good impact on the polling as it could have gone further downwards if returning officers and their teams were not spurred by K Ravi Kumar.
