With voter turnout largely dismal in all three phases of the 2024 Lok Sabha Election, a small constituency in Assam, sharing its border with Bangladesh, shone on May 7, reporting an estimate 92% voter attendance – the highest among all 14 seats in the state.
So, is high turnout an anomaly in Dhubri? Let’s look at the general trend in the constituency.
The general voter turnout in all three phases was an estimated 66.1% in Phase 1, 66.7% in Phase 2, and 65.58% in Phase 3. Assam, where all 14 constituencies have voted, registered a voter turnout of 81.56%, which is much higher than the national average.
Among Dhubri’s 11 assembly segments, two – Gauripur and Birsing-Jarua – saw turnouts of a little over 94%.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Dhubri registered a turnout of 90.66%, even as the countrywide turnout stood at 67.4%. Dhubri’s was the highest among all the 543 parliamentary constituencies across India. AIUDF’s Badruddin Ajmal retained the seat, receiving 718,764 votes. Congress Abu Taher Bepari received 492,506 votes and AGP’s Zabed Islam received 399,733 votes.
In 2014 Lok Sabha election, Dhubri registered a turnout of 88.48%, more than 22 percentage points higher than the national average of 66.4%. Badruddin Ajmal defeated Congress candidate Wajid Ali Choudhury by a margin of 2,29,730 votes. He received a total of 43.27% of the votes. Badruddin received 5,92,569 votes, while Wajid Ali Choudhury, who came second, received 3,62,839 votes. BJP candidate Debomay Sanyal, who came third, received 2,98,985 votes.
How Delimitation Brought Drastic Changes in Dhubri?
Being Assam’s western-most constituency, Dhubri has a large minority community. The seat includes areas bordering Bangladesh to the west. After delimitation, several Muslim-majority belts of neighbouring Barpeta, which was also earlier a Muslim-majority constituency, have been made a part of Dhubri to the east.
The Dhubri parliamentary constituency currently has over 26 lakh voters, which is the highest among all the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Out of the total electors, more than 85% are Bengali-speaking Muslims. The second-most populous constituency after Dhubri is Darrang-Udalguri, which has 21.87 lakh voters.
Aminul Islam, AIUDF MLA from Mankachar under Dhubri Lok Sabha seat, said, as mentioned in an Indian Express report, 7.84 lakh voters from old Barpeta have been moved to Dhubri, of which more than 7 lakh are Muslims.
Why is the Turnout Consistently High?
Dhubri shares a 141.9 km border with Bangladesh, and 80% of its voters are Muslims of Bengali origin. As per the Indian Express report, there is a fear among the people about the citizenship status, which could be one of the reasons for high voter turnout since the past two Lok Sabha elections.
According to the Election Commission of India, a category of D-Voters (Doubtful Voters) was introduced in 1997. D-Voters were those whose citizenship was doubtful or in dispute. Till December 2023, over 2.44 lakh D-Voter cases were referred to Foreign Tribunals in Assam over the citizenship. Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the Assam Assembly in February that there are 96,987 D-Voters.
Data shows there are 27,858 D-Voters in Dhubri.
Many also fear the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which has been in abeyance since 2019. Some Bengali-speaking Muslim voters think if they don’t vote, their names will be removed from the electoral roll. “It is a misconception quite rampant among less educated people,” The Indian Express report mentioned quoting an expert.
Also, young voters turning up in record numbers shows there is a “feeling of disenchantment among the youth with certain policies of the present dispensation”, as per a report in Moneycontrol.com, quoting a guest faculty at National Law University and Judicial Academy, Guwahati.
The contest in Dhubri is a close one between sitting three-time MP Badruddin Ajmal of the AIUDF and prominent Assam Congress leader and MLA from Sarupathar, Rakibul Hussain. Zabed Islam of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a BJP ally, is also in the fray.