By IANS,
New Delhi : A total of 10.7 million people, nearly 25 percent more than in 2003, will be eligible to vote across 11,000 booths this year to pick a new legislature in Delhi.
“This time a total of 10,714,859 voters, over 2.2 million more than the last time, can exercise their voting rights,” Uday Baxi, joint chief electoral officer of Delhi, told IANS.
“It’s a huge exercise and we are deploying around 80,000 people to carry out the democratic process in the capital city.
“An interesting feature is there are some 3.9 million voters in the age group of 18 to 29. We expect these people to come out and vote,” he said.
Delhi goes to the polls Nov 29 to elect a new 70-member assembly.
The Election Commission is determined to make people vote — using the electronic voting machines.
“There will be several audio, video and print awareness campaigns to woo the voters. We sincerely want and hope that the voting percentage improves,” Baxi added.
In the last assembly polls, only 4.12 million people voted, a dismal 49 percent turnout.
Looking at a sizable jump in the number of electors, the authorities have decided to have 11,000 poling stations, up from 9,142 in 2003.
Of the 10.7 million voters, around six million are male.
District wise, Northwest Delhi has the largest number of voters (male and female) at 1.41 million, followed by Northeast (1.27 million) and West district (1.26 million).
With 943,151 electors, Central Delhi has the least number of voters followed by New Delhi district (989,403 voters).
“Photo ID cards are available for 80 percent of our voters,” Baxi said.
The election office is deploying over 11,000 electronic voting machines (EVMs) – one in every polling station. If the number of candidates in a constituency is more than 16, the number of EVMs too will be more. One EVM can register 9,999 votes.