Women Have Far Less Votes Than Men In AJK

KOTLI (Azad Kashmir) , (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point news - 20th july, 2016): Although women make almost half of the population of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, their number of votes is far less than that of men. The total number of registered female voters for the Thursday's Legislative Elections of the State is 1,190,839 as compared to 1,483,747 to that of male voters, meaning around 11 per cent of women remained unable to get their votes registered for the polls. The interesting thing is that there is not even a single constituency in 29 Constituencies of AJK's all districts and 12 constituencies of refugees, spreading over four provinces of Pakistan where women registered voters outsmart male voters.

In District Kotli, which has the highest number of voters in AJK's all districts, the number of female voters is 196,609 as against 246,230 male voters. AJK's Capital Muzaffarabad has 191,112 registered female voters as against 238,164 male voters.

District Poonch has 141,334 female voters, while the number of male voters here stands at 169,634. The total number of registered female voters in District Mirpur is 106,244 and that of men voters is 127,274.

District Bhimber's three constituencies have 133,727 male and 109,438 female voters, while District Sudhnoti's two constituencies have 91,283 men and 74,860 women voters.

District Bagh, which has three constituencies the total number of male voters is 126,326 and that of female is 106,246. District Neelam has 44,105 female voters as against 52,479 male voters.

Similarly, District Havelli has 36,824 female voters as compared to 43,813 male voters. The 12 constituencies, spreading over four provinces of Pakistan have a total of 184,067 women voters as against 254,817 men voters. An official of NADRA told APP that the main reason of the huge gap between the number of voters between the two genders was that several households in AJK still did not feel the need to have Identity Cards for their women. "Still there are people in our society who think that ID Cards are needed only for jobs or travelling purposes.

Hence they don't bother to apply for the same for their women," he remarked.