‘Ghar Aaja Pardesi’ call amid rising concern over less voter turnout

Amid rising concerns over less voter turnout in the first phase of polling on April 19, the Jaunpur district administration on Wednesday started calling voters who have migrated for jobs and higher studies, or other purposes.

In a 21-second video on X, district magistrate of Jaunpur Ravindra Kumar Mandar is seen conversing with one of the migrants and convincing him to return to his home to exercise his electoral power in the sixth phase on May 25. The Jaunpur district authorities have named this campaign as ‘Ghar Aaja Pardesi’.

The question arises whether this effort could encourage other UP districts which sends larger number of migrants to other states.

According to Census 2011, Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of inter-state migrants which is around 12.32 million (1.232 crore). Though no concrete data is available for the number of migrant workers from different districts in UP.

But the data collected by the state government during pandemic outbreak in 2020 when the migrants returned to their hometown shows -- Maharajganj district in Gorakhpur division received a maximum of 7.11 lakh migrants, which was also the highest in the state. Within Gorakhpur division, Maharajganj was followed by Gorakhpur with 50293 migrants. Other districts which received larger number of migrants are Prayagraj (1,38,311), Sant Kabirnagar (99,941), Mau (97,073), Bahraich (91,956), Balrampur (88,522), Siddharthnagar (83,451) and Basti (82,000).

Out of top 10 divisions in Uttar Pradesh where maximum number of migrants returned, seven were in east UP and Bundelkhand region, including Gorakhpur division which received as many as 838313 migrants, Devipatan division (2,72,905), Basti division (2,65,392), Prayagraj division (2,50,946), Ayodhya division (2,45,403), (2,25,112), Varanasi division (1,40,208), which included Jaunpur, and Chitrakoot division (1,15,760).

Retired IAS Awanish Kumar Awasthi, who is presently working as chief advisor of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, said it is indeed a very good initiative by Jaunpur district administration to increase the voter turnout.

He said the election commission also promotes such initiatives under their flagship program SVEEP (Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation).

He said other districts in Uttar Pradesh which send even more migrants to other states could replicate the initiative.

Jaunpur additional district magistrate (ADM Finance and Revenue), RA Chauhan said the initiative is a brainchild of the district magistrate to encourage the migrant workers to return home and cast their votes. He said the administration has established a control room from where they are reaching out to migrant voters every day and motivating them to return to their home for polling.

Another official said that the control room staff was armed with a list of mobile numbers obtained from local gram panchayats and trying to connect with migrant workers who have left Jaunpur. “Many migrants are expressing their willingness to return for the upcoming election,” he said.

“The team has been trained to effectively communicate with the migrants. They are well-versed in Hindi and some of them are fluent in Bhojpuri, a regional language spoken in Jaunpur,” he added.

Migration, that takes electors away from their homes, remained one of the reasons for less voter turnout. Though electors can have their names added to the electoral rolls of the constituency they reside in, but many choose to retain the voter ID from their home constituencies for various reasons.