Gujarat: Tribal women more active in exercising their franchise

It was the tribal dominated constituencies that voted with gusto even when Gujarat handed over all the 26 seats to the BJP to propel Narendra Modi to the Centre. It was also the constituencies in the 'tribal' districts of the state where women came out in high number to vote. Urban seats like those in Surat, Gandhinagar and even Ahmedabad lagged behind not just in percentage of women coming out to vote but overall voting too.

In the 2014 elections, Valsad saw the highest turnout among women voters at 73.03 per cent followed by Bharuch which had a women voter turnout percentage of 72.34 per cent. Bardoli had a turnout of women voter at 72.14 per cent. Both Valsad and Bardoli are seats reserved for Schedule Tribe candidates while Bharuch though not reserved has a substantial population of tribals.

On the contrary, Ahmedabad had a women voter turnout of 56.5 per cent and 58.48 per cent while Surat and Gandhinagar had a turnout of 59.97 per cent and 61.40 per cent. What is interesting is that the the difference in voting percentage between male and female voters is much less in constituency that are tribal seats or have a substantial population of tribals.

Valsad, Bharuch and Bardoli had a difference of just 1.89 per cent, 4.23 per cent and 4.31 per cent respectively between male and female voter turnout. On the contrary the four urban seats had a difference ranging from 9.01 per cent (Ahmedabad East) to 7.03 per cent (Surat).

Paulomi Mistry, who has worked extensively with tribals said, "The Lok Sabha polls often coincide at the time of Holi and marriage season among the tribals. This is the time when tribals, who usually migrate to work return home and hence are available for voting." . She said, in tribal areas often someone else cast votes in the name of tribals.