Between LS and Assembly polls in Jharkhand, surge in women coming out to vote In state elections held in the wake of the popular Maiyya Samman Yojana of the JMM govt, the gap in polling percentage on gender lines was striking. With women voters having played a key role in propelling the Hemant Soren-led government to its second consecutive term – a first in the state’s 24-year-old history – women MLAs are likely to get their fair share in the state Cabinet, sources within the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) said.
Election Commission data shows that the number of women voters in Jharkhand saw a significant jump in the six-month period between the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. While the increase in the number of male voters was 17,777, around 2.5 lakh women were added to the electoral rolls in the period between the two elections. “Our base was the 2019 polls, from when around 19 lakh women were added to the electoral rolls.
We intended to target that section of the electorate and we succeeded,” came out to vote this time than in the Lok Sabha elections – in absolute numbers, 7.3 lakh more women voted compared to 1.8 lakh more men. In fact, women outnumbered men in terms of voting in as many as 72 of the state’s 81 Assembly constituencies this time. Of these, 48 seats were won by the INDIA bloc (29 JMM, 14 Congress, 4 RJD and 1 CPI-ML-L), and 22 by the NDA (BJP 20, AJSU Party 1, LJP (Ram Vilas) 1).