Understanding Voters’ Political Awareness: A Survey of the 16-Yachuli Assembly Constutuency in Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India

Abstract Voters’ political awareness is considered to be the important element which determines public engagement with politics, participation and active citizenship. It orient towards the political events, campaign, political parties, elections and its related mechanism and activities, etc. and serve as a primary step towards political socialization in a society. The present study explores on the facets of political awareness among the voters in the 16_Yachuli assembly constituency in the Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, India. We employed a multi-stage stratified random sampling to ensure fair representation of sample at all levels i.e., constituency, polling station, and voter respondents. The study is partly empirical and partly descriptive. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Structured questionnaires were employed to gather information on voters’ level of awareness. Personal interviews with adult respondents were conducted. Our results indicate that while voters were well aware and familiar of the EVM (100%), voting age in India (86%), NOTA provision in the EVM (72%), their elected representatives (MLA, CM, MP, PM), ruling party(s)/government in state and centre (92%), conduct of free and fairly election (88%); many of them were not familiar or aware of VVPAT (35%), and none of them were aware of the ECI norms of maximum expense limit during the elections at both parliamentary and assembly election. The study suggests that more sensitization initiatives are required in order to promote awareness among the voters in the study area specifically and in Arunachal Pradesh in general. Keywords: Arunachal Pradesh, voters’ awareness, EVM, VVPAT, ECI