Achi news desk-
In three days, the curtain will come down on the Lok Sabha elections in Assam with the third and final phase of polling on May 7. In the last round, four constituencies – Guwahati, Kokrajhar (ST), Dhubri and Barpeta – will come out. to survey The ballots for the other 10 constituencies were held on April 19 and April 26. However, the polls will continue in many other parts of the country until it finally ends on June 1 after covering seven phases. The votes will be counted on June 4. The total number of days of the election process this time, from the announcement of the polls by the election committee to the counting of the votes, is 82, although the actual voting period is spread over 44 days starting on April 19. It is the second longest after the first parliamentary elections of 1951-52, which lasted more than four months between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952, in 68 phases, for 489 seats in 401 constituencies in 25 countries. . The shortest voting period for a general election in the country was in 1980, and it was only four days. In 2004, the four-phase Lok Sabha polls took 21 days; In 2009, there were five stages and the process was a month long. In 2014, the elections were held in nine stages and lasted 36 days. The 2019 elections were held in seven stages and lasted 43 days. The Election Commission of India attributed the length of the election process to regional geography and other factors such as holidays, festivals and exams. Despite the explanation, the fact is that this is too long an exercise and you will be relieved once it is finally over.
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As for poll turnout so far, Assam has reason to be proud compared to the Hindu heartland states which have recorded much lower polls. It is this low voter turnout in these states that is said to have rung alarm bells in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and reinvigorated the opposition; The somewhat low voter turnout is attributed to fatigue among Saffron Party supporters who may have chosen not to vote in this hot summer confident that the party would win anyway. This fear of not crossing the 400 mark is said to have pushed the party to tread the path it knows so well – go for religious polarization to galvanize its supporters into action in the remaining five phases of the polls. In fact, the party now talks less about what its government has done in the past five years and what it plans to do in the future; The collective saffron mind led by Modi focuses on warning the planners of the main opposition Congress party to take their wealth, including even the mangalsutra, to redistribute it between the “infiltrators” and those with “more children” – in other words. , the Muslims. In Assam, on the other hand, the community—Bengali-speaking Muslims—is in demand because it has enough numbers to influence the outcome in two of the four constituencies. The claim beating in the chest of the BJP until the first phase of the polls that it does not need a vote of the ‘Mia’, is no longer heard.
Also Read: Two women to fight for Guwahati LS seat on May 7
