THE ELECTION SURVEY
The Election Survey
To scrutinise the Students’ Parliament Elections, the Media Club, IIT (BHU) Varanasi conducted a unique survey that asked a wealth of questions about their views on the current procedure and working of elections, formulated the voter turnout stats and much more.
The institute grants its students the right to look after their interests through democratically elected representatives who play a crucial role in upholding the students’ needs and opinions in matters which affect them the most.
After critically analysing the survey data, we present to you a brief overview of how the elections panned out this year around.
Humans of General Elections
Booth Level Officers were appointed from the institute faculty for the polling station areas. The elections were scheduled on the 24th of March, and took place at four centres supervised by 4 Returning Officers (RO) respectively for different batches i.e. Part I, Part II, Part III and one for other UG and PG. Three ballot boxes were placed at each booth and there were a total of 16 booths each supervised by a Presiding Officer (PO). A total of 96 candidates stood up for the elections, and 4405 students were listed in the voters’ list (UG and PG).
Voter turnout stats
The elections noticed a healthy participation from the students. However, the voter turnout varied from one batch of students to other. The first year students and the second year students turned up in huge numbers accounting for the top two voter turnouts and they recorded a voter turnout of 87.7% and 92.66% respectively. On the other hand, students from 3rd year onwards appeared to be less interested in politics with the polling booths of MTech and PhD students witnessing limited participation, accounting for 69.83% and 60.79% of the total students respectively. The turnout rate among the third yearites and fourth yearites was quite sound and was recorded to be 85.87% and 84.31% respectively.
Students interested in politics and those with strong partisan feelings registered and voted in greater numbers. It was noticed that personal contact with voters turned out to be the winning strategy to drive turnout and when voters were personally invited to participate, they were more likely to follow-through on that commitment.
What if everyone voted?
When more people turn out, the laws and the reforms drafted by the parliament are more likely to reflect the needs of the majority and less likely to cater to a specific demographic, and hence the voter turnout is considered to be a measure of the health of the student participation. A higher voter turnout is always more likely to bring more effective policies and changes than a lower voter turnout. The variations recorded in the voting pattern were primarily due to the psychological factors such as general interest in politics, attachment to institute, the reliability of the parliament and interest in the changes, in addition to candidate familiarity.
The Current Students’ Parliament Election Procedure.
Not many people seemed impressed with the current procedure of the Students’ Parliamentary Elections. While most considered it to be quite traditional and wanted changes in the system and strategies of election and campaigns, a few also found the lack of politics in college campuses to make environment undemocratic. Around 80% of the students gave the current election procedure an average rating between 3 to 4.
Revamping Current procedure of Parliament Elections
Many responses suggested introducing NOTA as one of the options while voting. Some of the suggestions from the students’ community to improve the current procedure include open debates, branch representatives, live discussions on manifestos among others. The idea of an open debate would help students in distinguishing between candidates, especially since all the manifestos are pretty similar. Introducing a centralised platform to put forward the agenda and also listing the ideas and problems from the students’ community could be a nice initiative. Plagiarism of manifestos, influence over masses outside the polling areas were some areas as suggested by the students which need to be rectified. One-on-one debate between the parliamentarians emerged as another good suggestion to help the candidates convey their opinions more precisely to the voters while also providing everyone with a chance to give his/her opinions.
Campaigning and Campus politics
Most of the people were irritated by too much spamming of the posters on social media. A few problems raised by the students include the regular spamming of groups, lack of proper discussion on important topics and lack of a proper system to control the campaigning process. While most candidates hardly put up their vision or the strength of their candidature while campaigning, most of them considered sharing posters and banging rooms asking for votes as their primary objective. A student pointed out that, “As per the rules, campaigning was to stop one day before, but it didn’t. People were still campaigning on the last day, enticing voters by offering them rides to the booth. Even at the booth, candidates and their representatives were campaigning.” A few other suggestions include proper meetings or speechs/debates to help the voters know the candidates better, keeping the environment of polling booths in-check preventing campaigners from bargaining for votes just outside and ensuring proper, implementable points in the manifestos of the candidates.
The Students’ Parliamentary Elections form an integral part in ensuring a smooth workflow throughout the session and we hope that with the problems and suggestions pointed out above, the election process would become more smooth from the next year onwards.
