Women voters become a deciding factor in Nellore

Nellore : Women voters are going to play a key role in deciding the winners and losers in almost all the constituencies in Nellore district in the coming elections, whether it is Assembly or Parliament. Their sheer numbers are likely to negate even caste equations.

Women and men ratio in the district is among the highest as per the latest voters list released by the administration on Tuesday. According to official sources, final voter list will be released on April 24. Political parties opine that there will be a slight difference in the number of voters with only six days remaining for the release.

As per the voter list released on April 17, 2024, there are a total of 19,36,133 voters in seven Assembly constituencies of Kandukuru, Kavali, Atmakur, Kovur, Nellore City, Nellore Rural, Sarvepalli and Udayagiri in the district.

There are 9,47,344 male and 9,88,579 female voters, with 41,335 more female voters than male. With 5,000 more female voters in each Assembly constituency, the role of women would be crucial in deciding the fate of contesting candidates in the elections.

This factor made all the candidates to focus on women voters by inducting women of their families and relatives in electioneering, in a bid to make more impression.

Earlier, Left parties used to implement this kind of campaign method, explaining the problems to the voters during electioneering. Later, Congress and TDP also started including wives, mothers and sisters during the electioneering, but that was on very rare occasions. They limited women participation to a few houses in their native places only.

But now, it is entirely different as winning the election became litmus test for TDP and YSRCP. Except one or two candidates of these parties, remaining all have inducted wives, daughters, daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, granddaughters even those settled in other parts of country and abroad. They could be seen appealing to women voters to vote for their family member, under scorching sun in villages.

Even though the women relatives of the candidates don’t know the name of village or local issues, they are meeting the voters in villages and taking harati and urging them to vote for their candidates.

This kind of scenario has been witnessing especially in Nellore City, Nellore Rural, Kovur, Sarvepalli Assemblies.