Bengaluru: Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar kicked off a walkathon organised by the Rainbow Children’s Hospital and Birthright, Marathalli on March 8. This walkathon was organised to create awareness for the need to create a safe and secure environment for women in Bengaluru.
Speaking on the occasion, CEO Sanjiv Kumar said that it was time for women to turn up in large numbers in the coming Assembly polls to exercise their franchise. Giving out the latest statistics, Kumar said that the total number of voters in Karnataka as per the final revision of the electoral roll of 2018 was 4,96,56,059 out of which 2,44,72,288 were women alone. In Bengaluru, there were 41, 92,706 female voters (as against 46, 04,190 male voters).
Kumar said that there was an encouraging trend visible as the women voters’ registration had increased by 13 percent during the summary revision as compared to 2013’s legislative assembly election. In all, 7.72 lakh young voters in the 18-19 age groups had registered during the special summary revision taking the total to 15.42 lakh voters. There has been a constant increase in the gender ratio which was just 985 in the 2013 assembly polls and has now gone up to 972.
He also said that the persons aged 18 and above who have not yet registered can register their names in the voters’ list till the last day of nominations.
Rainbow Children Hospital’s Cluster Head and Vice President Neeraj Lal said that they wanted to celebrate the International Women’s Day in a meaningful way and hence had invited the state election commission officials to spread the message and encourage more and more women voters.
Former Mrs India Tripti Aravind was the chief guest of the programme who led the walkathon programme.
