Lok Sabha elections: Gender ratio of voters rises from 928 to 948 in five years

New Delhi: Over 2.38 lakh centenarians and more than 1.84 crore teenagers are among the voters, who are expected to participate in the world’s biggest festival of democracy – the parliamentary elections of India in April-May this year.

The country's 96.88 crore registered voters include 48,044 third-gender people, along with 47.15 crore women and 49.72 crore men, according to the Election Commission (EC), which is now preparing to hold the parliamentary polls to elect the 18^th Lok Sabha.

The gender ratio of the voters went up from 928 to 948 in the past five years since 2019 when the last Lok Sabha elections were held in the country.

The nation had 46.47 crore men on the electoral roll in 2019, and the number went up by 3.25 crore in the past five years. The number of women voters, however, grew by 4.02 crore since 2019. The latest electoral roll also has 8361 more transgender voters registered across the country against 39683 in 2019.

The EC recently made public the highlights of the national electoral roll after completing the Special Summary Revision 2024, with reference to January 1, 2024, as the qualifying date. The exercise resulted in the deletion of 67.82 lakh dead, 75.11 lakh absent or permanently shifted, and 22.05 lakh ‘duplicate voters’ from the electoral roll.

The commission took note of the remarkable increase in the registration of female voters and stated that the electoral roll gender ratio had “surged positively, indicating the growing role of women in shaping the democratic fabric of the nation”.

Over 2.63 crore new electors have been included in the electoral roll during the latest special summary revision. Out of the new voters, around 1.41 crore are female electors, which surpassed the newly enrolled male voters, numbering around 1.22 crore, by over 15 per cent

The electoral roll has 1,85,92,918 octogenarians and 2,38,791 centenarians. The number of people with disabilities on the roll increased from 45.63 lakh in 2019 to 88.35 lakh in 2024, registering a rise of 42.72 lakh.

In addition to the ‘postal ballots’ for service voters, the EC introduced the facility of ‘home voting’ for the octogenarians and the centenarians, as well as for people with disabilities on the electoral roll, who could not or would find it difficult to come to the polling stations to exercise their franchise. The voters engaged in essential services and the ones down with Covid-19 or suspected to be suffering from the disease could also take advantage of the home-voting facility and cast votes.

The electoral roll, as of February 8, had 1,84,81,610 voters in the age group of 18-19 years and 19,74.37,160 voters in the age group of 20-29 years.

The EC introduced four qualifying dates in a year, allowing any citizen attaining the age of 18 years by January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1 of a year to submit an advance application for registration as a voter from the date of draft publication of the electoral roll.

While the applicants attaining the age of 18 years by or on January 1, 2024, were already registered as voters, the commission received a total of 10.64 lakh advance applications with reference to the three remaining qualifying dates of the year.

The EC is preparing to announce the schedule of the polling to elect the 543 members of the Lok Sabha within a few weeks. The poll panel had announced the schedule of the Lok Sabha elections on March 5 in 2014 and on March 10 in 2019.

The Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will come into effect immediately after the declaration of the schedule of the parliamentary polls by the EC.