GUWAHATI, March 24 - All the Members of Parliament from Assam who emerged victorious in the 2014 general election won their respective seats with less than 50 per cent representativeness. An analysis of the total vote share and representativeness during the last Lok Sabha polls by the Assam Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms reveals that more than half of the registered voters of the 14 Lok Sabha constituencies of Assam had not voted for their respective representatives.
While only four MPs � Rameshwar Teli, Sarbananda Sonowal, Naba Kumar Sarania and Bijoya Chakravarty � could somehow cross the margin of 40 per cent representativeness, MPs like Biren Singh Engti, Gaurav Gogoi and Sirajuddin Ajmal became MPs even though around 70 per cent of the registered voters of their constituencies had not voted for them.
It may be noted that Sarbananda Sonowal was elected as a Member of Parliament of the 16th Lok Sabha from the Lakhimpur constituency. Later, in May 2016, he was elected to the Assam Legislative Assembly from Majuli and sworn in as the Chief Minister of Assam. In the 2014 LS polls, 43 per cent of the total registered voters had voted for him. Lakhimpur had recorded 78 per cent polling in the 2014 polls.
However, Sonowal�s representativeness was the second highest as per the analysis after Dibrugarh MP Rameshwar Teli, who was voted to power by 44 per cent of the registered voters.
On the other hand, AIUDF�s Sirajuddin Ajmal became Barpeta MP by dint of support from only 28 per cent of the registered voters. The Congress�s Gaurav Gogoi also won the Kaliabor seat with only 30 per cent representativeness.
It is worth mentioning that Kaliabor and Barpeta had registered 80 per cent and 84 per cent polling respectively during the last general elections.
As per the report, the highest polling percentage was recorded in Dhubri (88%), but, AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal was sent to the Lok Sabha by only 38 per cent of the total registered voters.
Around 38 lakh registered voters did not cast their votes in the 2014 parliamentary election, which was more than 20 per cent of the registered voters. The ADR has compiled the report on the basis of data disclosed by the Election Commission of India on their website.
The percentage of representativeness was calculated by dividing the votes polled for the winner by the total number of registered voters. This value represents the percentage of votes won by the winning candidate among the total number of registered voters in the respective constituency.
The percentage of voters that did not vote for the eventual winner was calculated by dividing the votes that did not poll for the winner by the total registered electorate, i.e. the total number of registered voters. This value represents the percentage of voters who did not cast their votes for the winning candidate among the total number of registered voters in the constituency.
