Representative image only. File | Photo credit: PTI
“64.64 crore voters exercised their franchise in the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year with women outnumbering men,” according to data released by the Election Commission of India (EC) on Thursday (December 26, 2024).
“Female voters are 65.78% while male voters are 65.55%,” said the commission. Election Commission officials claimed that no election management body in democratic countries around the world has shared such granular data.
This comes in the backdrop of allegations of non-disclosure by the EC of data for Lok Sabha elections, 2024 and four assembly elections – Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh – along with parliamentary elections.
“This suo moto initiative is aimed at increasing public confidence in India’s electoral system,” the EC said.
Regarding women participation in elections, the EC said the number of women candidates was 800, as against 726 in 2019. Maharashtra had the highest number of women candidates with 111 in the fray, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 80 and Tamil with 77. Nadu.
But at the same time, out of a total of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, 152 had no women candidates. A total of over 97.97 crore citizens registered themselves as voters as against over 91.19 crore in 2019 – an increase of 7.43%.
“Of these registered voters, 64.64 crore voted in 2024, as against 61.4 crore in 2019,” the EC said. According to the poll panel, a voter is defined as any Indian citizen whose name is registered in the electoral roll. Voters who finally vote are called voters.
The total number of votes cast using EVM and postal voting option was 64,64,20,869. Only 64 crore 21 lakh 39 thousand 275 votes were cast from EVM in which there are 32,93,61,948 male and 31,27,64,269 female voters.
“A little over 13,000 registered third gender voters exercised their franchise (27.09%),” according to the statistics. About 4.3 million voters cast their votes using postal ballots.
Dhubri parliamentary constituency in Assam recorded the highest voter turnout of 92.3% while Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir recorded the lowest voter turnout of 38.7% compared to 14.4% in 2019.
According to the data released by the commission, the turnout was less than 50 percent in 11 parliamentary constituencies. According to the Election Commission, 40 polling stations or 0.0038% of the total 10.52 lakh polling stations compared to 540 in 2019.
Regarding overseas Indian voters, the EC said that over 1.19 lakh such persons comprising 1.06 lakh men, 12,950 women and 13 third genders were registered in the category, while the registered overseas voters in 2019 were 99,844.
Overseas Indian voters are those who are Indian citizens living abroad and are eligible to vote here for various reasons. They came to vote in India by showing their original passports as proof of identity.
published – Dec 26, 2024 at 05:16 pm IST