THRISSUR: Polling booths exclusively for women, a seemingly novel idea to encourage women voters to exercise their franchise in the elections, will be a thing of the past in Eriyadu panchayat. The panchayat has been setting up women-only polling booths for the past many years. With the Election Commission’s new order, the decades-old practice will come to an end.
The practice started in 1948, when ballot election was introduced in Kerala. “It is learned that Eriyadu and Azhikode regions had a vast Muslim population at that time. The exclusive women booths were set up in Eriyad panchayat to encourage more Muslim women to cast their votes. It was a hit that time and the tradition continued since then. We have heard that a similar system was followed in Kashmir, which the poll panel later discontinued,” said panchayat president K P Rajan.
For the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019, Eriyadu panchayat had about 21 exclusive women booths and reported around 85% polling. While there were exclusive women booths for the panchayat elections in 2016, the system was stopped later.
According to Rajan, arranging women-only booths and making them come for the polling have become a hectic task these days.
“There have been many instances in which a husband and wife get allocated to booths in two different corners of the panchayat due to the presence of women-only booths.
Often, the women decide not to cast their vote in such scenarios. Also, since people are progressive these days, the women-only booths serve no purpose,” said Rajan, adding that political parties too sought the merging of women-only booths as scrutinising the voters’ list turns laborious.
The panchayat usually has 45 booths. However, as women-only and general booths will be merged, there will be four fewer polling booths in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.