Women voters outnumber men in Manipur

Our Correspondent
Imphal, Jan. 7 (EMN): The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday published the final electoral roll for Manipur polls that included 20,57,854 voters.

Of the total voters, 10,62,426 are women while 9,95,208 are men and 220 are third gender.

Except Jiribam and Senapati district, women voters outnumbered at all the 11 electoral districts of Manipur. In Jiribam, men voters are 15,353 against women's 14,762 while Senapati has 80,893 men and 80,517 women voters.

Sharing these information during a press conference in Imphal on Thursday, the Additional Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manipur N Praveen Singh, said, ‘ECI also sent a list of photo similar entries for verification. So we have also started verification and during the current verification process around 37,114 entries have been identified as correct entries.’

As many as 1.32 lakh similar photo entries were sent to the state Chief Electoral Officer’s office in Manipur for verification.

Of the total, 14,746 entries were identified as absentees/shifted/deaths.

Otherwise verification of around 40 percent of the total (photo similar) entries have been completed.

The verification process in Jiribam and Bishnupur districts are also in progress, Praveen said.

The target for completion of the ongoing verification process of the state is April 2023.

As per final electoral roll 2023, Electors to Population Ratio (EP Ratio) is 57.35 as compared to the Draft Electoral Roll figure of 55.81 in October last year. The EP ratio has been pulled down by two districts (Senapati and Kangpokpi) when EP ratio stands at 41 and 36 respectively because of abnormal increase in population in 2011-12.

Expressing that there is overwhelming participation from female electors and they are much more proactive in the participation of the electoral process, he said, ‘this time lots of new voters of 18 and 19 years have joined in the electoral roll. So around 46,586 new young voters (18-19 years) were enrolled this time,’ he added.

At the same time the total number of polling stations is 2955 with the amalgamation of 5 polling stations while one new polling station was created, he stated.

Joint CEO Ramananda Nongmeikapam and other officials were also present at the conference.

It may be noted that the Manipur state cabinet on January 2 decided to conduct urban and rural local body elections in March and April later this year.