All political parties are in the fray for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The dates have not been announced yet, but election rallies of leaders are happening a lot. One will have to wait to know who will win the election, who will be defeated, but in which direction youth will go, that party can definitely win. Here youth means young voters. There are total 14.40 crore voters in the state. Of these, more than 45 percent of the voters are between 18-40 years of age, and the eyes of all political parties are on them.
Why political parties are engaged in nurturing young voters can also be understood from these figures. Elections are to be held on 403 assembly seats in the state in the next year i.e. 2022. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state, about 71 lakh new voters were added as compared to 2014 and among them the number of 18-year-old voters was 17 lakh. The number of young voters up to 29 years of age was about 27 per cent. In the 2017 assembly elections also, 17 lakh new voters were added and about 12 lakh voters were 18 years old.
For the first time in the recently held Panchayat elections, more than 1.5 crore people voted. Out of these, more than 75 lakh voters were below 21 years of age and this is only from rural areas. Before the 2022 assembly elections, the commission is preparing a list of youth, which is likely to be around 2.5 to 3 crore. Not only this, more than 12 lakh new voters can also join the state in this election.
The United Nations Research report considers people aged 15 to 24 as young. According to The National Youth Policy 2003, people between 13 and 35 years of age were considered as the first youth in India. After this in 2014 it was reduced from 15 to 29 years. Later in 2017 NSSO (National Sample Survey Organization) said that in India people between 15 and 34 years will be called youth.
The most important role of youth
Leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress are now making all kinds of promises to woo the young voters. It was the young voter who had brought Mayawati to the chief minister’s chair in the year 2007, bored with the political upheaval of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s regime. Akhilesh Yadav got the power of UP in 2012. Then the young voters of UP supported the BJP and in the year 2017, the BJP government was formed under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
BJP trying to woo youth
BJP knows very well what role young voters can play in the politics of the state. In view of this, Youth Connect of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha is running a polling, 20 youth campaign in the entire state. In view of this, Tejaswi Surya, the head of Yuva Morcha, had come on a state tour recently. Keeping the youth in mind, a provision of Rs 3000 crore was made for the employment of youth in the supplementary budget. The government has also decided to provide tablets or smart phones free of cost to one crore youths studying in undergraduate, postgraduate, diploma etc. courses. From this December, youth will start getting tablets or smarts.
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Congress’s announcement- Graduation pass will give scooty to daughters
To woo the youth of UP, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has announced to give free smart phones to Inter pass girl students and scooty to graduate pass daughters. Youth who have studied IIT, NIT, Medical and Law are being associated with the party, so that more and more youth can be brought closer to the Congress through them. To take the youth along with her, Priyanka has started a new campaign named ‘Be the voice of UP’.
SP, BSP are also not behind
On the other hand, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has not yet made any announcement for the youth like Priyanka Gandhi, but the leaders of his party are saying that the party should make promises like employment to 10 lakh youth, making Shikshamitras assistant teachers again in the election manifesto. Planning to join. It is obvious that he will soon make many announcements to connect the youth with the party. The BSP supremo also announced to give employment to the youth. Mayawati said that if the BSP government is formed, then every youth will be given employment to stop the migration from UP.
Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of youth voters. file photo
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