percentage points, compared to turnout in 2007. Source: Figures available from the official website of chief electoral officer, Uttarakhand, http://ceo.uk.gov. in/; accessed on 9 March 2012; Data aggregated and recomputed by CSDS data unit.

The main contest in this election was between the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC/Congress). Other key players in the electoral race were the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Samajwadi Party (SP), the newly formed Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha (URM) and the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal-Panwar (UKD(P)), a breakaway faction of the erstwhile UKD.

formation in a situation where both the Congress and BJP had fallen short of a majority (Table 1B, p 76).

This election witnessed a signifi cant change in the pattern of voting in two of the three regions of the state, namely, Garhwal with 22 seats and Kumaon with 20 seats. In both these regions, the

had finished on top in these regions. The Congress performed particularly well in Rudraprayag and Chamoli districts of Garhwal, and Pithoragarh district of Kumaon. In the third region, that is, Maidan, which has the highest number of seats (28) post-delimitation, the BJP retained its 2007 dominance over the

Congress winning 16 seats. The decline

of the SP, and the BSP, which lost fi ve

seats in this region compared to 2007,

than the Congress. The BJP’s perform

Udham Singh Nagar district where the party won seven of the nine seats on offer. This was also the district which saw the highest turnout in the state at 77% (Tables 2A and 2B, p 76).

The contest between the Congress and BJP was closely fought in both the general and reserved SC seats, with the Congress taking a marginal lead over the BJP in the latter category. However, the BJP was not able to retain the edge it had over the Congress in both these

Table 4A: Level of Satisfaction with the Incumbent Government (2007 and 2012)

Table 4B: Comparison of BJP Government (2007-12) and Congress Government (2002-07)

in Uttarakhand

categories in 2007. The BSP which had won five general seats in 2007 managed to win only one this time (Table 2C, p 77).

The BJP enjoyed a signifi cant lead over the Congress in the almost entirely rural constituencies, while the Congress did better than the BJP in the semi-urban constituencies. The contest between both the parties was close in the almost entirely urban constituencies (Table 2D, p 77).

Post-poll survey-based estimates of vote by social background reveal that the BJP’s performance among its traditional voters, brahmins and Rajputs improved further compared to 2007. The party however dropped by a huge 25 percentage points among other upper castes which include Jat Hindus, Bhumihars, Kayasthas and Punjabi Khatris. The Congress however did not benefi t from BJP’s decline here. Compared to BJP’s gains among brahmins and Rajputs, the Congress’ gains among other communities, particularly Muslims and Hindu OBCs were equally big. The party gained by a massive 34 percentage points among Muslims and by 22 percentage points among Hindu OBCs. Both the BJP and the Congress also made huge gains among dalits, largely at the expense of the BSP. The Congress also made signifi cant gains among the young 18-25 years (up 10 percentage points compared to 2007), among non-literates (up 11 percentage points), in urban seats (up 8 percentage points) and among men (up 5 percentage points). Much of these gains came from parties other than the BJP. Women favoured the BJP more than the Congress. The BJP also did well among the poor, while the Congress did well among the upper class (Table 3A, p 77).

The post-poll survey found that overall a majority of voters expressed a sense of satisfaction with the work done by the BJP government. However this does not seem to have swung the election in BJP’s favour, like it did not for the Congress five years ago. When a similar survey was conducted in 2007, most people had also expressed their satisfaction with the then Congress government, and yet it was voted out (Table 4A).

When asked to compare the performance of the BJP government with that of the previous Congress government led by N D Tiwari, respondents were almost equally divided, with 29% opting for the BJP government and 28% choosing the Congress government (Table 4B). However, on most key issues of governance, the BJP government fared much worse than the previous Congress government. In 2007, during a similar survey, the Congress government had got fairly high ratings from voters on questions of governance. The BJP government was however not rated as highly by the voters on the same questions this time. For instance, in 2007 nearly two-thirds had said that development of Uttarakhand had improved under the Congress government; however in 2012 less than onethird said the development of the state had improved under the BJP government (Table 4C).

Table 4D: Trend in Popularity of Major Political Leaders as Most Preferred CM (2002-12)

(1) All figures are in % and rounded off; Respondents

who said “Don’t know” or gave other choices have been excluded; Responses above are to an open ended question.

vol xlviI no 14

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Table 4E: Popularity of B C Khanduri and Harish Rawat as Most Preferred CM, by Regions and among Communities

Chief Minister Garhwal Kumaon Maidan Rajputs Hindu Choices OBCs

B C Khanduri 49 32 27 46 25

Harish Rawat 5 19 10 11 16

All figures are in % and rounded off; Respondents who said “Don’t know” or gave other choices have been excluded; Responses above are to an open ended question. Source: Figures are based on a post-poll survey carried out by CSDS; Data set weighted by actual vote share of major parties.

Table 4F: Opinion of BJP’s Repeated Change of Chief Ministers between 2007 and 2012

Table 4G: Most Important Election Issue for People in Uttarakhand

The survey data throws some light on the factors that may have made this a closely fought election. B C Khanduri’s personal image was a positive factor for the BJP and his popularity continued to be high with 34% of the surveyed r espondents wanting him to continue as the chief minister (CM) of Uttarakhand. Harish Rawat of the Congress was a distant second with 11% of voters wanting him as CM. Responses for Vijay Bahuguna were insignificant and therefore have not been reported (Table 4D, p 78). Khanduri’s popularity was highest in Garhwal with 49% of the people in his home region wanting him as the CM. Harish Rawat on the other hand did best in Kumaon, his home turf. If we look at CM preferences of different communities then the gap between Khanduri and Rawat was highest among Rajputs and lowest among Hindu OBCs (Table 4E).

When voters were asked what they thought about the repeated change of chief ministers by the BJP during the last five years, 42% said that the BJP should never have removed Khanduri as chief minister in 2009 in the fi rst place. Twenty-eight per cent were of the opinion that BJP should have kept one CM for five years, whoever it be. Six per cent said that the BJP did the right thing by changing chief ministers again and again, and only 2% said that the BJP should not have removed Ramesh Pokhriyal as CM (Table 4F).

Unemployment was the main issue for the voters of Uttarakhand. Thirty-eight per cent of the voters who were interviewed said it was the most important election issue. Price rise was not far behind at 37% (Table 4G).

Survey Methodology

The findings presented here are based on a post-poll survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, in Uttarakhand. A total of 1,680 persons, randomly selected from the latest electoral rolls, were interviewed in the first and second week of February 2012 (after polling but before counting of votes) in 116 locations in 30 constituencies spread across the state. The assembly constituencies and four polling booths within each sampled constituency were selected using the Systematic Random Sampling technique. The respondents were sampled randomly (oversampling to allow for non-completion) from the updated electoral rolls of the selected polling booths. Of the 3,840 sampled respondents, 1,680 could be interviewed within the stipulated time.

The social profile of the respondents interviewed largely matched the demographic profile of the state (Table 5). The interviews were conducted by specially trained fi eld investigators. The respondents were interviewed in the face-to-face interview situation using a structured interview schedule in Hindi. Respondents were mostly interviewed at their home, preferably alone. The voting question was asked using a dummy ballot paper and dummy ballot box.

Table 5: Sample Profile

All figures are in % .

The fieldwork of the survey in Uttarakhand was coordinated by Annpurna Nautiyal (HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal), Jaya Pande (Government College, Ranikhet) and Rakesh Negi (HNB Garhwal University). The survey was designed and analysed by a team of researchers at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi which included Banasmita Bora, Dhananjai Kumar Singh, Himanshu Bhattacharya, Jyoti Mishra, K A Q A Hilal, Kanchan Malhotra, Kinjal Sampat, Rupali Warke, Shreyas Sardesai, Sohini Mookherjee, Vibha Attri, and Yogendra Yadav. Sanjay Kumar of the CSDS directed the survey.

MANAGER

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