PARTIES MUST FORSAKE CASTEISM, FOCUS ON WOMEN & YOUTH

Jaipur: PM Narendra Modi is repeatedly talking about existence of only ‘four castes’ in the country. Youth and women voters are included in these ‘four castes’ will prove to be game changers for political parties in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections. These are the castes which recently changed the governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and also gave a bumper victory to BJP Madhya Pradesh. Therefore, political parties will have to pay special attention to these two castes.

According to Election Commission data, more than 96 crore people, including 47 crore women, are eligible to vote in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. According to Election Commission data, more than 1.73 crore people who are eligible to vote are in the age groups of 18 to 19 years. At the same time, in a dozen states and union territories including Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Kerala, the number of women voters is more than male voters. There has been a significant improvement in the sex ratio of voters (number of women per 1,000 male voters). It has increased from 928 in 2019 to 948 this time. In the last five years, more than 4 crore women voters have been added compared to 3.2 crore men. There has been a 9.3% increase in women voters this year, from 43.1 crore in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While male voters have increased by 6.9% from 46.4 crore.

According to a 2023 letter sent by Election Commission to political parties, there were 17.32 crore registered voters in 1951, whose number increased to 19.37 crore in 1957. While there were 91.20 crore voters in 2019. Out of total voters registered, about 18 lakh are persons with disabilities. There was 45% voting in first LS polls while the voting per cent was 67 in 2019 LS polls.