KOCHI: Political parties in Kerala have been into an electrifying election campaign right from the day when the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced April 23 as the polling day. But even after all these shoutings, many people in the state even don’t know in which constituency they belong to due to constitutional jurisdiction, also the polling date and the candidates contesting in their constituency.
It was in a survey conducted by a startup Insight Political Strategists and Workforce (IPSW) as part of a campaign under the slogan ‘Ente Mandalam Ente Abhimanam’ in five Lok Sabha constituencies in the state that the voters expressed their ignorance on their constituency jurisdiction, candidates and even the polling dates. The survey was conducted in Palakkad, Alathur, Thrissur, Chalakkudy and Ernakulam constituencies between March 11 and April 18.
As per the survey findings, 44,000 people out of 1,17,800 surveyed in Ernakulam were not aware of their constitutional jurisdiction while 24,000 do not know the election dates and 31,000 people are ignorant of the candidates contesting in the constituency. In Palakkad, 48,000 people out of 1,18,570 respondents were not aware of the constitutional jurisdiction while in Alathur it was 54,000 people who sounded ignorant. Of the total 1,12,565 people who took up the survey in Alathur, over 33,000 were not aware of the candidates and 25,000 did not have any clue on election dates.
The survey in Chalakkudy pointed out of 1,21,248 voters, over 23,000 did not know the election dates while 32,000 people had no idea about the candidates. In Thrissur, over 35,000 voters were not aware of their candidates while over 46,000 voters did not have any clear idea about the extent of their constituency.
“Kerala is one of the most important states for the ongoing 2019 general elections due to various political reasons.
That’s one of the reasons why we chose to campaign in five Lok Sabha constituencies compared to three in Tamil Nadu, three in Andhra Pradesh, one in Telangana, one in Karnataka and one in Delhi,” said IPSW chairman Jairvarda S. He said the survey was carried out with 85 field workers with 15 to 17 members working in each constituency. “Our teams mainly covered rural segments. The survey also collected details about the major issues being faced by people in their constituencies,” he added.