New Delhi, May 9 (IANS) An elated Election Commission Saturday said that over 50 percent of women voters in the capital came out to cast their votes for the Lok Sabha polls, showing much more enthusiasm than in the last general elections.
'We were flooded with calls from women voters enquiring about the poll process and clearing doubts over their identity proof,' Uday Baxi, joint chief electoral officer, told IANS.
He also said that a trend that the commission noticed in these elections was that young women voters exercised their franchise based on their own choice rather than getting influenced by family members.
'The younger women voters were better informed and they even motivated others to come out and vote. We are quite satisfied with the turnout of women voters,' said Baxi.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the turnout of women voters was 44.4 percent but this time it was 50.16 percent.
Among the seven constituencies, New Delhi fared the best with 55 percent women turning up to cast their ballot. South Delhi scored the least with just 45 percent women voters exercising their franchise.
Ranjana Kumari, director of Centre for Social Research and Women Power Connect, an NGO working for women, said that she was happy with the turnout.
'The visibility of women in these elections definitely went up. I saw a lot more women standing in queues in the polling booths, as well as manning those booths, than I did in the last elections. However, there were just a handful of candidates contesting the elections, which was unfortunate,' Kumari told IANS.
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