MUMBAI: Mumbai and its suburbs will have 40 polling booths will all women staff, a first time step by the Election Commission to create awareness about women's empowerment, additional chief election officer Dilip Shinde said Friday.
While 26 of these booths will be in the suburbs, the rest are in the island city, he said.
Each booth will have a team of around six women to operate it, he said.
"This is a unique idea that the district collector will be implementing. Each women voter who comes to these booths will get a pack of sanitary napkins," he said.
He said the district administration has purchased 16,000 sanitary napkin packs for the purpose, adding that if some of the stock remain after voting, it will be given to tribal students.
"So far, in the three phases of polls that have been completed, 186 women only polling booths were operated. An average of 1,500 votes are polled in one booth, which means a total of 2.79 lakh votes were polled in these booths," he said.
In the first three phases, 60 polling booths were also manned by physically-disabled persons, he said.