LS polls: Number of veterans thinning faster amid rise in total candidates

Veteran numbers decline amid rising number of total candidates

At 94, Shafiqur Rahman Barq was planning to contest from Sambhal Lok Sabha seat when ill health caught up. The five-time MP from the Western Uttar Pradesh constituency passed away last month, and with him, the Parliament lost its eldest member.

The ilk of veterans, to which Barq belonged, is thinning fast with every election.

The share of candidates who have contested multiple times (more than twice) has fallen from 19 per cent of total contestants in 1999, to 7.1 per cent as of the last election, shows a Business Standard analysis of data from Ashoka University’s Trivedi Centre for Political Data.

It has declined for four straight general elections.

Multiple veteran candidates are not contesting going by the candidate lists announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress.

These include the BJP’s Meerut member of parliament (MP) Rajendra Agrawal who has served three terms in office. He made way for actor Arun Govil who played Ram in Ramayan in the recently announced list of candidates. Third-time Congress MP Pratibha Singh from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh said that she is not contesting the elections citing a poor situation on the ground for re-election.

The drop in share also reflects an absolute decline in the number of veteran candidates even as the total number of contestants has risen over the years. The total number of candidates has risen from 4,648 in 1999 to 8,054 in 2019. But the number of candidates who have already contested more than twice has fallen from 881 to 569 in the same period (chart 1).

This decline comes despite a persistent gap in the winnability of such candidates when compared to others. The analysis looked at the share of winners among multiple contest candidates (those who have contested more than twice) with the share of winners among candidates contesting for the first and second time. The gap between the two has narrowed since the turn of the millennium. But the veterans still have a higher percentage of winners in their ranks.

The share of winners among veteran candidates was 29.2 per cent in 2019 compared to 5 per cent for candidates contesting for the first or second time. It was 35.6 per cent for veterans in 1999 and 6.1 per cent for others (chart 2).

Lower winning percentages also reflect an increased number of candidates.

There were nearly nine candidates for every winner in 1999. This has risen to nearly 15 as of 2019.

The decision to nominate a candidate from a given seat is dependent on multiple factors which may be more nuanced than plain winnability, noted a 2014 study entitled ‘Electoral Competition and Candidate Wealth in India,’ from author Devesh Tiwari of the University of California. Wealthy candidates whose resources can help the party are often given safer seats, while those with greater ability to win votes are often given more challenging assignments.

“The ultimate decision on whom to nominate in an election boils down to whether or not a party realises a greater utility from nominating a vote generating candidate or a party building candidate, which in turn is partially a function of the efficacy of pursuing party-centric or candidate-centric strategies to win elections,” it said.

“… parties nominate their candidates rationally: they nominate candidates with the skills are resources to build their party organization into safer seats, while nominating candidates skilled at winning elections into competitive seats,” added the study.