The Question is... Why Are Election Commission's Turnout Numbers Not Adding Up?

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Jan 23, 2025

Dear Reader,

In India, simultaneous elections for the Parliament and State Assembly are conducted in states such as Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. In a simultaneous election, a voter goes to a polling booth and votes in two different elections through two different EVM units, one after the other.

Is it possible, then, that a voter walks into a booth and exercises their right to vote in only one of the two elections?

Sometime in December 2024, when I sat down to analyse Election Commission of India's detailed statistical reports on the 2024 Lok Sabha and State Assembly Elections, all running into thousands of pages, my aim was to understand the larger voting trends behind the June 4 verdict.

But what caught my eye was this strange anomaly in data: In several constituencies across Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Sikkim, there was a difference between the voter turnout in the Lok Sabha election and the State Assembly election.

This means that 81,916 people in constituencies across these states voted in only one of the two elections despite both being held simultaneously at the same polling booths.

For instance, consider this: In Andhra Pradesh's Hindupur Lok Sabha Constituency which has seven Assembly segments, 13,96,687 EVM votes were polled in Lok Sabha elections, while 14,01,362 total EVM votes were polled in Assembly constituencies. 4,675 more EVM votes were polled in the Assembly election as compared to the corresponding Lok Sabha seat.

The question was: How and why did these voters walk into the booth and chose not to exercise their franchise in one of the two elections despite both being held at the same time, and the same polling booths? Is it really a case of voters voting in one election and not the other, or has there been an error in calculating the votes polled?

The question also was: If the turnout in both elections is different, why does the Election Commission not release separate turnout data for Lok Sabha and State Assembly election at the time of polling?

I spent weeks studying EC reports, spoke to politicians, election officers and senior bureaucrats including former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India, Mr. OP Rawat to understand the meaning and scale of these data discrepancies.

And with their inputs, I was able to piece together this report.

2024 Elections: 81,000 Vote Mismatch in States Voting for LS & VS Together

READ FULL REPORT

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Thanks,
HIMANSHI DAHIYA
Special Correspondent, The Quint

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