Thiruvananthapuram: The women-friendly polling stations introduced in the state for the first time were all-women booths, but for the polling agents. The officials who interacted directly with voters – polling officers and special police officers – were women. What difference did these booths make? “Perhaps the women are mild when they deal with voters, especially the old, infirm and the disabled. Still, there were issues,” said a woman official at booth No. 48 of St Joseph’s HSS, Thiruvananthapuram.
“For women polling officials too, it was a lot easy to deal with only women,” said S. Prabhakumari, block-level officer there. There were 32 polling stations in the city spread across Kazhakkoottam, Nemom, Thiruvananthapuram and Vattiyoorkkavu constituencies. A woman official said it was a taxing job. “This demands complete focus as you cannot afford to make mistakes. It is physically strenuous as well because sometimes the queues would not end for hours,” she said.
Some blamed the women for being slow at work. A woman special police officer at Government UPS, Fort, said, “the number of voters who came to the booth where I was posted was more than at the women-friendly booth here. Their queue was slow-moving,” she said. It was around 2 p.m. then. At the women’s booth, 538 people out of 1,024 had voted, while at the other booth, the polling ratio was 741/1,344.
