New Delhi, (Samajweekly) Women participation in the electoral process has increased in all the five states going to polls — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab, and Manipur as compared to the last assembly elections with UP witnessing the maximum participation of the fair sex at 29 points, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra said on Saturday while announcing the poll schedule.
As many as 18.34 crore electors from the five states will take part in the democratic exercise and out of that 8.55 crore are women electors. In the women participation, UP is followed by Goa with 24 points, Manipur with 19 points, Uttarakhand with 18 points, and Punjab at 10 points.
In the gender ratio, Goa recorded 1056, Manipur 1065, Punjab 902, Uttarakhand 928, and UP at 868, Chandra said.
Notably, out of the 24.9 lakh first-time voters, 11.4 lakh are also women.
Nearly 13.01 lakh are differently-abled voters and 31.47 lakh senior citizens mostly above 80 years will exercise their franchise and this will inspire the younger generation, he said.
The CEC said service electors including Security Forces deployed in far-flung places, Mission staff, and others are about 5.29 lakh.
Polling time has been increased by one hour in all the states. The final electoral rolls were published on January 5. The EC has made an effort to increase the number of voters and as a result, all states have seen an increase, with the maximum voter increase in Uttar Pradesh.
The EC has capped the number of voters per booth to 1,250, resulting in an increase in the number of polling stations to 30,334 as the average number of voters per polling booth has decreased.
