CHENNAI: Women voters have been outnumbering their male counterparts for the past few years, and now, for the third consecutive year, the size of the newly-added women electorate in Tamil Nadu has risen. This means that among 18-to-21-year-olds, Tamil Nadu has more female than male voters.
About 9.51 lakh new voters have been added to the electoral rolls since January 2021, of whom 5.62 lakh (59.1%) are women, and 3.88 lakh (40.8%) are men, as per the final rolls of special summary revision for 2022 released by Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo here on Wednesday.
As on January 5, the State has 6,36,25,813 voters — 3,12,26,759 men, 3,23,91,250 women and 7,804 third gender. The list of newly-added electors was released after deletion of voters on account of migration, death and duplicate entries, added Sahoo.
Similarly, between January 2020 and January 2021, 13.6 lakh voters were added, of whom 7.82 lakh (57.2%) were women and 5.84 lakh (42.7%) were men. The increase in women voters is mainly attributed to higher female birth rates between 2000 and 2005.
Until a few years ago, electoral rolls had too many errors, such as duplication of voters, mismatch of photos, incorrect deletion, and misspelt names. However, after the strict scrutinisation process put in place, the accuracy of electoral rolls has improved substantially.
“There was a misconception over the high share of women voters. But recent trends clearly show more women voters were added to the electoral rolls through submission of Form 6. This shows the State has more young women than men,” said an Election Commission official.
During special camps till November 30, a total of 10.36 lakh applications were received, of which 10.17 were included on the electors’ list. This includes 4,56,071 men, 5,60,735 women and 650 of the third gender.