12 all-women polling stations set up in volatile Anantnag

Ishfaq Tantry

Tribune News Service

Kokernag, April 23

Masarat, the woman presiding officer of a polling station in Bindoo Zalangam village of the Kokernag area in south Kashmir, is busy making an elderly villager understand that he cannot vote on behalf of his mother, who he claims cannot travel to the polling booth because of a fractured limb. She politely turns away the villager.

It is her first experience of heading a polling station handled by women staff, on the Anantnag-Kokernag road.

To encourage more female voters to exercise their franchise, the Election Commission in its guidelines for J&K had directed that at least one polling station managed only by women has to be set up wherever possible. “A total of 714 polling stations were set up for Anantnag district today, which include 71 model polling stations and 12 all-women polling stations,” Chief Electoral Officer Shailendra Kumar said.

“The security arrangements are good but arrangements for food and lodging were not good,” Masarat rued, narrating her experience of spending a night inside the polling station with other staff, mostly government teachers.

At another such polling station in Pahalgam area, the women staff said that they had spent the night at their relatives’ homes. “We came here at 4 am,” said a staffer.

Not only women employees, male employees at many polling booths in Anantnag complained about poor facilities. They said no bedding was provided to them for the night stay inside the polling booths.