Women emerge key deciding factor

Vikarabad: Women voters will become a major deciding factor in deciding the poll fate of candidates in the four constituencies – Parigi, Vikarabad, Tandur and Kondangal – in the district, as one goes through the final voters list recently published by the State Election Commission.

In numbers, there is a slight difference between male and female voters. There is a total of 8,40,175 voters in Vikarabad, out of which males are 4,21,556 and females 4,18,552. The difference is 3,008. Tandur and Kodangal constituencies are dominated by women voters. Though population-wise, their number is less in comparison with the male, but in voters list they make a good count. Women are thus very progressive in the district in registering as voters. Going by all these permutations and combinations, the contestants who can influence women voters and make them veer towards them would emerge victorious, observe analysts. Of course, this rides on the assumption that all the women exercise their franchise.

If one goes through the constituency-wise statistics, Tandur consists of 2,01,888 voters out of which male voters are 98,843 and female voters 1,03,034. Women clearly have an upper hand with 4,191 more votes. Kodangal with a total electorate of 2,01,836 has 1,00,578 male voters, and 1,01,230 female voters. Here also women dominated their opposite gender with 652. In the case of Vikarabad, the total number of voters is 2,07,168 comprising 1,04,991 male voters and 1,02,163 female voters. The difference between both is 2,828 only. When it comes to Parigi, there are 2,29,283 voters; male voters are 1,17,144 and female voters 1,12,125. Here the male voters dominated the women with 5,019.

Sensing the women power on the polling day, candidates are leaving no stone unturned in garnering their support. Accordingly, they are putting women leaders in forefront in poll campaign. Apart from this, the nominees are trying to attract women self-help groups (SHGs) to get bulk votes. If one looks at Tandur constituency, there are 34,472 SHGS, each consisting of 10 to 15 members and there are 815 groups in Basheerabad mandal. The candidates are also collecting data of women voters right from village level. They are making lengthy discussion with local leaders to know the problems and giving assurances based on them. They also reflected in the recently released manifestos such as Rs 10 lakh interest free loans to SHGs.