TRIVANDRUM, 25 April 2004 — The southern Kerala state has recorded a sharp fall in the number of voters after fresh enrolments were closed on April 15, according to the final figures released by the electoral authorities in Kerala yesterday.
The total number of voters now stands at 21.03 million, 1.02 million less compared to the last elections.
All the political parties are in jitters as the winning margins of majority of the candidates in the 1999 elections were around 10,000 votes.
For instance, the winning margin of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) veteran Varkala Radhakrishnan was only 3,128 votes in Chirayinkeezhu, where the number of voters has now slumped by 78,000. The same is the case in several constituencies.
The political parties are also worried at the fact that nearly half a million youngsters take their school final exams every year and they are entitled to get the voting right after a couple of years at the age of 18 but this does not reflect in the scale of enrolling.
The slump in enrolments on the electoral roll in this highly literate but industrially poor state is generally attributed to the disinterest on the part of the youngsters and large number of migrant population whose names were routinely checked and removed from the list.
