Voting without voters: Parties set up call centres to woo migrant voters, but few return

Santosh Behera (48) from Podingi village, Hinjili assembly constituency in Odisha’s Ganjam district, works in a textile mill in Surat, Gujarat. He was among the hundreds of migrant workers who returned to their village in the southern Odisha district to cast their vote during the second phase of simultaneous polls for the state assembly and the Lok Sabha held on May 20, 2024.

Kisan Patra (45) from Goutami and Mukundrao Dora (48) from Buguda of Sanakhemundi and Polasara assembly segments, respectively, have also travelled from other states where they work only to exercise their franchise. All these assembly segments are under Aska, one of the parliamentary seats in the state with a high migrant population, as well as the home turf of Chief Minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Head Naveen Patnaik. “After voting, we will leave for work without waiting for the election results,” one of them told this reporter.

Despite the large number of the migrant workers who came home to participate in the election process, the voter turnout, was not impressive in the second phase of the polls in the state, particularly in Aska. The second phase of the elections was held in five Lok Sabha seats, including Aska, Balangir, Baragarh, Kandhamal and Sundargarh and 35 assembly segments under these parliamentary constituencies. Preliminary report of the Election Commission of India revealed a 69.34 per cent turnout, while Aska recorded the lowest (60.78 per cent) a reduction from the 65.53 per cent seen during the general elections of 2019.

In Odisha’s first phase of elections held on May 13, the eastern state recorded 75.68 per cent turnout. The Berhampur Lok Sabha seat, another parliamentary constituency in Ganjam with a high population of people who work in other states, recorded 65.41 per cent, compared to 65.9 per cent in the 2019 election. In the first phase, the elections were held in Berhampur, Nabarangpur, Koraput and Kalahandi Lok Sabha seats and 35 assembly segments under these.

“We can’t blame only migrant workers for the low turnout. The scorching heat and lack of interest among voters are some other reasons for the poor turnout in the second phase of the elections in the state,” said Jayant Mohapatra, former vice chancellor of Berhampur University.

Loknath Mishra, an activist, said all migrant workers have not returned to Odisha to cast their votes this time, despite political parties inviting them.

Ganjam district administration has also set up a call centre to reach out to migrant voters by phone to invite them to come to their native places to vote. The administration has been inviting over 5,000 migrant workers of the district by phone, after collecting their phone numbers from the labour department, said Debadutta Mahanta, sub collector, Chhatrapur.

An estimated 800,000 people of the district are working in different states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Telangana, according to unofficial sources.

The government, however, said in the state assembly in November last year that only 40,088 labourers from the state migrated to other states in search of employment through 626 licensed labour contractors. Highest of them are from Balangir district (26,151) followed by Nuapada (8,205) and Ganjam (1467). Labour activists had said the actual figure could go up manifold.

People from Ganjam migrate to other states to earn their bread due to a lack of employment opportunities and absence of irrigation facilities for agrarian activities in the region, said Anita Subhadarshini, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in Aska Lok Sabha constituency.

In Hinjili, where the chief minister was elected five times to the state assembly and is fighting for his sixth term, the number of migrant workers is high, she said. Her opponent, Ranjita Sahu, who is in the fray for the first time on a BJD ticket, said the Odisha government has undertaken several welfare measures for the migrant workers.