What is common in the elections in 1937, 1995 and 2014 in OdishaIJ
There is an earth-heaven difference between 1937 and 2014. However, the polling ratio in 1937 still remains on top of all elections followed by the 2014 polls.
In the State’s electoral history, the polling percentage has crossed the 70 per cent mark only for three times. The latest is the general elections of 2014, which recorded a 74 per cent voters’ turnout. In the year 1995, a total of 73.64 per cent voters of the State had exercised their franchise.
However, in the first elections to the State Assembly in the pre-Independence era in 1937 after formation of Odisha Province, a whopping number of 94 per cent of qualified voters had taken part in the polling. Then, only people paying the Choukidari Tax were eligible for voting.
In 1937, there were only 5,20,584 voters in Odisha, out of whom 4,90,381 had casted their votes. Out of the total polling, only 2, 65,261 ballots were found valid. In the meantime during the last 77 years, the number of voters in the State has reached 2,88,80,850.
The first elections to the Odisha legislative Assembly after the Independence were held in the year 1951 in which the polling was a mere 38.36 per cent. In the next elections in 1957, the polling percentage came down to 35.30 and in the 1961 polls this was 36.57 per cent.
In the Assembly elections of 1967, the polling percentage was 44.05 per cent while it was reduced to 43.39 per cent in the 1971 polls. However in the 1974 elections, the percentage again increased to 51.70 per cent.
Interestingly in the Assembly elections of 1977, which were held after the Emergency, the polling percentage in the State was a meagre 41.79 per cent. In the next elections in 1980, it increased to 47.08 per cent. The polling percentage was 52.27 per cent in 1985 whereas it increased to 56.63 per cent in the 1990 elections.
Again, the voting percentage jumped to a record 73.64 in the 1995 elections while it slid to 59.10 per cent in the 2000 polls, in which the BJD-BJP alliance headed by Naveen Pattnaik came to power.
The percentage of polling in the 2004 elections was 66.04 whereas it was 65.3 per cent in 2009.
Interestingly, in the 2014 polls when the graph of polling percentage rose in the tribals-dominated districts like Mayurbhanj, Nabarangpur, Jharsuguda and Boudh crossing the 80 per cent mark, ironically it is less than 45 in the State capital Bhubaneswar, where the literacy rate is highest.
In other tribal districts this time, the polling percentage is also more than 70. However, in the district of Ganjam the percentage is recorded at 65 while Khordha recorded the lowest 56.