'It's A Shame 21 Million Women Can't Vote'

The turnout of women voters will likely be more than that of men in the 2019 general election and yet 21 million women will not have their names on the rolls. Opposition unity will be decisive and alliances will make or break every state. These and other such revelations fill The Verdict (Penguin Random House), the forthcoming book by election experts Prannoy Roy and Dorab Sopariwala. The authors spoke to Satish Padmanabhan on what makes the 2019 polls the biggest and most important. Excerpts:

- Prannoy Roy And Dorab Sopariwala

One of the major sections of the book is about women voters. The bad news here is that 21 million women voters are missing from the electoral rolls.

Prannoy Roy: It is absolutely shocking and it is a crisis that needs to be dealt with. Twenty-one million people is like saying all the voters of Jharkhand are not allowed to vote. They are women above 18, who are Indian, who are resident, and who are just denied their right to vote. Why? Because they are not registered, or for various technical reasons. It is really unacceptable. The big giveaway is that there is also a huge north-south divide. Most of the missing women are in the northern states, like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Dorab Sopariwala: Well, of those 21 million-odd women, around six million are in the state of Uttar Pradesh alone, which means there are 80,000 women on an average per constituency who are missing. The question why they are missing is not known. Whether they vote or not is another matter, but they should at least be given the right.

And this is when in 2019 women might outnumber men?

PR: This will be the first Lok Sabha election where women voters’ turnout will be above men. It used to be 20 per cent behind men. They have already gone ahead of men in turnouts in the assembly elections.

DS: I must clarify...women will be more in terms of turnout, not in terms of numbers, because there are more men on the rolls. So, if you were to put the missing women on the rolls, the odds are you might actually have even higher numbers.

In the book you point out that a higher women’s turnout will be a disadvantage for the BJP....