CHENNAI: In less than five decades, the size of the electorate in Tamil Nadu has swelled by an astounding 85 per cent. Just as that number increased after each passing election, voter participation is going as well, much to the delight of officials in charge of the conduct of election.
More encouragingly, women are playing a big role: women voters have outnumbered men in over 170 of the 234 constituencies, and recorded a better percentage in the last election, show statistics.
It was in 1988, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections a year away, that the minimum statutory age for casting vote was lowered from 21 to 18 years by the regime of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi through the 61st amendment to the Constitution. In the Lok Sabha election of 1989, there thus were 35.7 million new voters from this age group, most of them queueing up eagerly to exercise their franchise.
In this Assembly election, there are over 1.38 crore voters in the age group of 18-29. To ensure complete coverage, the Election Commission has been taking conscious and consistent efforts to increase the voter population and to achieve the voting population to 100 per cent.
In 2011 Assembly election in Tamil Nadu, the voting percentage was a high 78.1 per cent. The total number of voters now stands at 5,82,01,620. Of this, 2,93,33,927 are women and 2,88,62,973 are men while 4,720 are transgenders.