After Goa, Gujarat To Have Pink Booths For Women In Assembly Polls

Gujarat is soon going to have women-managed polling booths in each of its 182 constituencies. The Election Commission will set up these ‘pink’ polling booths exclusively for women for the upcoming Assembly Elections. The measure comes after a pilot project was conducted in Goa earlier this year when it went to polls.

With this initiative, the Election Commission aims to improve women’s participation in the polling system.

“Gujarat will have all-women polling booths in each of the assembly constituencies,” said chief electoral officer of Gujarat, BB Swain, Indian Express reports.

Gujarat has a total 48,000 polling stations in the state. Of them, 182 will be pink booths. Each of the pink polling booths will have at least 10 women poll personnel. The EC will hire women for several positions such as presiding officers, polling officers, micro observers, security personnel etc.

“Gujarat will have all-women polling booths in each of the assembly constituencies,” chief electoral officer BB Swain

With this step, the EC shows how crucial the cause of gender parity is, said Swain.

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Gujarat has a total 4.25 crore voters. Of these, 2.03 crore women. Apart from the cause of gender parity, the EC is also showing its concern towards the physically disabled and is planning to set up auxiliary booths.

“We are planning to put up auxiliary booths for disabled voters. We are trying to locate the big institutions for disabled in Gujarat where we can set up the auxiliary booths,” the officer added.

Polling begins in December in Gujarat this year. The EC's official notification is likely to come in November.

The Goa EC took this step to encourage its strength of female voters to cast votes. Interestingly, Goa has around 5,62,930 female voters and it is close to 20,000 more than the male voters.