When tickets were issued to candidates from all parties the general crib was regarding the lack of women representation in the parties. Will this have an adverse affect on the poll prospects of these parties?
Party bosses may have ignored the repeated pleas from women candidates to give them more representation in the party, but the fact remains that when they seek votes, they will have to please the women voter as they are simply higher in number when compared to the men in many parts of Karnataka.
The highest ratio of women voters can be found in Udupi district in coastal Karnataka. In this belt, there are 1,154 women voters for every 100 men voters. This belt has 5 constituencies and parties will have to woo the women electorate more as they are simply higher in number.
The lowest women electorate could be found in Bengaluru Urban, where they are just 837 women voters for every 100 men voters.
The districts of Raichur, Dakshina Kannada and Koppal are next to Udupi district in terms of women voters with 1,020, 1,002 and 1,025 women voters for every 1000 men. The women are also dominant in the Gulbarga, Hyderabad-Karnataka, Central Karnataka, Old Mysore region and Mumbai Karnataka belts.
Statistics would reveal that women control at least 60 out of the 224 constituencies in Karnataka which would mean that they would hold the key in almost 20 per cent of the constituencies.
These are huge vote banks in Karnataka and no political party is ready to give it up. All political parties contesting the elections are aware of this and planning their election campaign in a more woman friendly manner at least in women dominated belts of Karnataka.
Congress leaders told rediff.com that they would rely heavily on the services of Sonia Gandhi to woo the women voters in the state. There is also talk of requesting her daughter Priyanka to canvass for the party in Karnataka. The Congress feels that these two leaders will be able to way the women votes in their favour.
The Bharatiya Janata Party would rely on Sushma Swaraj and also the pro-women policies of B S Yeddyurappa to attract the women voters.
H D Kumaraswamy, the Chief Minesterial candidate of the Janata Dal-Secular, says that he would have no problem in wooing the women voters in the state. He says that he had interacted with women from different parts of the state during his Janata Darshan programmes and he gets the feeling that they would support him during the elections.
