One of the all-women pink booths in Puducherry for the Lok Sabha polls on Friday.
| Photo Credit: M. Dinesh Varma
Several of the all-women “pink booths” functioned with near clockwork precision during polling for the lone Lok Sabha Parliamentary constituency of Puducherry.
The Elections Department had established 60 all-women staffed polling stations—including all the 31 in Mahe—across the UT.
The initiative of the Election Commission of India to celebrate women empowerment in the world’s largest democratic exercise, was also an appropriate hat tip to the gender ratio in Puducherry, which had 5,42,979 women to 4,80,569 men in an electorate of 10,23,699 voters.
One of the pink booths in the city was the Soucilabai Girls HSS on Vysial Street in the Tamil Quarter which was entirely managed by women polling personnel, from the presiding officer down to the police constable posted at the entrance.
Under the Assistant Returning Officer-5 overseeing elections in the Assembly segments of Raj Bhavan, Muthialpet and Ouppalam, there were two other pink booths—at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Girls Higher Secondary School and the Vaasavi International School.