A representative image of voting.
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Bengaluru: An unusually high number of registered voters — aged 18 years and above — among the total population in some districts could point to a potential population crisis of fewer births taking place, a top election official said.
Karnataka’s electors-to-population ratio (EPR) is 70.16. This is the total number of registered voters against the projected population.
This ratio is above the state average in 24 out of 31 districts, according to the latest electoral roll data analysed by DH. The ratio is so high in some districts that it baffled Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Meena’s team during electoral roll revision.
The Chikmagalur district has the highest EPR at 85.84. This means more than 85 out of 100 people in the district are aged above 18 years. The total projected population in the district is 11.33 lakh, of which 9.73 lakh are adults enrolled as voters.
“We cross-checked this with various other databases, such as ration cards, hoping to find an explanation. Everything pointed to fewer births taking place. There’s a negative population growth,” the top election official who did not want to be identified told DH.
The Kodagu district comes second with an EPR of 84.25, followed by Mandya (83.72), Udupi (83.07), Hassan (82.82) and Tumakuru (81.78).
“It’s true that the fertility rate has reduced across Karnataka,” Lekha Subaiya, professor at the Population Research Centre, Institute for Social & Economic Change, said. “The family planning programme has been very successful, and the idea of small family size has caught on across the population. Also, once they have a boy, they tend to stop.”
The Mysuru district, which is Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s native, has an EPR of 76.51, above the state average. The Chamundeshwari Assembly constituency in Mysuru has an astonishing EPR of 97.74!
The EPR is lowest in Bengaluru Urban district and the city’s municipal area, ranging between 51.78 and 63.21.
Electoral roll data also points to problems with gender ratio. Overall, the gender ratio among voters in Karnataka is 1,003 females to 1,000 males. But when it comes to first-time voters (aged 18-19), the ratio falls to 892.
“We wanted to check if fewer females aged 18-19 were being enrolled. That took us to the National Family Health Survey where we saw that there are fewer females in the 0-5 age group,” the senior official quoted earlier said.
Last week, a United Nations report said India's population would touch 1.46 billion this year, adding that the country's fertility rates had fallen below the replacement threshold. This effectively means fewer children are being born than needed to maintain the population size from one generation to the next, without migration.