By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The outcome of the 2013 Assembly election in the State will be extensively decided by the female voters as is evident from the increasing number of women voters in many constituencies.
There are a total of 7,53,307 female voters in comparison to 7,36,708 male voters in the State, which means that there are over 16, 000 more female voters than their male counterparts.
There is a trend that the women voters come out in large numbers to cast votes during elections.
District-wise, East Khasi Hills has the highest number of female voters with 221433 compared to 204075 male voters followed by West Jaintia Hills with 70083 female voters to 65679 male voters, West Khasi Hills with 67193 female voters to 66399 male voters, South West Garo Hills with 35541 women voters to 35239 male voters and East Jaintia Hills with 31583 women voters to 30737 male voters.
However, the number of male electorates are higher in Ri Bhoi, South West Khasi Hills and Garo Hills excluding South West Garo Hills.
West Garo Hills has 130291 male voters to 130206 female voters followed by Ri Bhoi with 60804 male electorates to 59956 female electorates, East Garo Hills with 51993 male electorates to 48904 female electorates, South Garo Hills with 34855 male voters to 32843 female voters, North Garo Hills with 32217 male voters to 31313 female voters and South West Khasi Hills with 24419 male voters to 24252 female voters.
Constituency-wise, Mawlai has the highest number of female voters with 18594 and the number of male voters is 15266. This is followed by Khliehriat with 15997 female voters to 14987 male electorates and Nartiang with 15242 female voters to 14599 male electorates.
As per the statistics, East Khasi Hills and West Jaintia Hills are female dominated where it was seen that female voters outnumbered their male counterparts in all the constituencies with a total number of 221169 female voters in East Khasi Hills and 70082 in West Jaintia Hills.
Whereas in Garo Hills, the male dominated districts include East Garo Hills, North Garo Hills and South Garo Hills with 51980 male electorates in East Garo Hills, 32194 male voters in North Garo Hills and 34842 male electors in South Garo Hills.
It may be mentioned that the current statistics of the electoral roll is like the 2008 Assembly elections as far as the percentage of gender-wise voters is concerned whereby the female percentage was more than the male percentage standing at 89.38 per cent and 88.69 per cent respectively.
Overall, the number of enrolment this year has increased two-fold as compared to 2008 with over 1 lakh new voters out of which 45,000 are young voters.
The total number of voters in the State are 14,90,015 with Mawlai constituency in East Khasi Hills having the highest number of voters with 33,869 while Dalu in West Garo Hills with 15,979 voters is the smallest constituency in terms of population.