While the ruling Congress and opposition BJP have stayed away from giving the proposed 33 per cent representation to women candidates in ticket allocation for Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls, the electoral fate in around 10 Assembly constituencies rest in the hands of women electorate of the hill State.
As per the data of voters released by the State Election department, as many as six constituencies in the State are dominated by the female voters. Four of these constituencies lie in district Hamirpur while one each in Shimla and lahaul-Spiti district.
Among the women dominated Assembly segments, while Nadaun of Hamirpur has highest number of female voters, the largest difference of female-male voters is recorded in Sujanpur, where the women voters have outnumbered male voters by a difference of 2247.
In Nadaun, the total number of female voters is 42,869 against 42,180 male voters. In Badsar, there are 40,612 female voters against 38809 of male voters. Bhoranj in Hamirpur has 38,335 registered female voters and 38,121 male voters.
Hamirpur has 34,289 female voters and 33,935 male voters and Sujanpur has 34557 female and 32310 male voters.
In Hamirpur district, the total number of female voters is around 7000 more than the male voters. The female voters in Hamirpur is 1,90,0616 against 1,83,055 male voters.
Other than Hamirpur, Shimla and lahaul-Spiti district also have a constituency, where female voters will have the key to decide their future representative in the state assembly.
In Jubbal & Kotkhai constituency in Shimla district, the number of female voters is 33,296 against 33,256 male voters and lahaul-Spiti segment also has less number of male voters with 11447 female voters against 11402 male voters.
While the BJP has given ticket to six women candidates, the ruling Congress has sent just 3 candidates in the political arena in the assembly polls. Though a number of women candidates have filed their nominations as independents, but the state is still far away from reaching the desired 33 percent representation of women in the policy making.
While there are six women dominated constituencies in the state. Only the Bhoranj seat is such, where Kamlesh Kumari of BJP would be in direct contest with Pramila Kumari of Congress. Keeping in consideration the high number of women voters in the state, the Election Commission of India, has arranged for 136 all women polling stations in the state, where the entire polling process would be managed by the women election staff and only women voters will be casting their votes in such polling stations.
In the final list of voters in Himachal Pradesh, Election Commission has confirmed that the hill State has a total of 49,88,367 voters. In which the number of male voters is 25,32,316 against 24,57,022 female voters and 29 third gender voters.