With more women voting, parties are bound to woo women voters
The latest disclosure by Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra that women voters have exceed men in the 2019 general elections, is bound to make political parties woo women voters in the ensuing assembly elections.
Chandra said at a webinar on ‘Enhancing Electoral Participation of Women, Persons with Disabilities and Senior Citizens’ that after seven decades and 17 General Elections since Independence, women's participation in India has exceeded that of men and stood at more than 67 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The Chief Election Commissioner said, “Gender gap, a crucial parameter, which was -16.71 per cent in 1962, has not only closed but reversed to +0.17 per cent in 2019. In fact, India has witnessed a 235.72% increase in female electors since the 1971 elections.”
He pointed out that it took 144 years for the United States to give equal voting rights to women, whereas this right was given to women from the time of our first general elections.
Chandra noted that even the Indian women had to fight for equal right to vote and women’s participation in the freedom struggle in a big way for their equal right to vote.
He recalled that it was a stupendous task in the beginning to prepare the electoral rolls, as women in those days, refused to give their names as somebody’s wife or mother!
The webinar was attended by over 100 delegates from 24 countries, four international organisations and 20 diplomats.
Chandra highlighted various initiatives taken by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to enhance women participation including associating more women as polling booth officials, larger number of All Women Managed Polling Stations, crèche facility at Polling Stations, separate toilets and waiting area at the polling booths, ensuring ease of registration with women Block level Officers motivating women in their own socio-cultural milieu, among others.
He elaborated on the concept of absentee voter facilitation, introduced by ECI in 2020 to ensure voting facility at the doorstep especially for 80+ senior citizens, persons with disabilities and COVID-affected voters. He added that such postal ballot facility had been successfully implemented across six state assembly elections including Bihar, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and UT Puducherry, which had a cumulative elector base of 73.6 million. He highlighted that, in the last five state assembly elections, 4.5 times higher electors participated in the electoral process through postal ballots and there is scope for widening the outreach and facilitation efforts. He added that there are around 15 million 80+ electors today in the country.
He cited various initiatives taken by ECI like app for persons with diabilities, provision of wheelchair, volunteer assistance, Braille EPIC card, Braille signage in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), free transport to and from polling station.