Bhopal: After a dip in polling in the second phase of Lok Sabha elections, BJP had turned to its female force to boost voting in the two successive rounds of the elections in Madhya Pradesh.
The party had established a ‘women war room’ in the state BJP headquarters here to mobilise female cadres including its elected representatives in the local civic bodies at the ground to draw women, voters, to the polling booths.
“The local women leaders and cadres of BJP were mobilised in the 17 Lok Sabha constituencies that had gone to the polls in the third and fourth phase of elections in the state to draw female voters to the polling booths”, a senior BJP functionary told this newspaper on Thursday.
The women activists of the party had launched door-to-door campaigns, and held roadside meetings and mass contact programmes to reach out to the female voters for the purpose, he added.
“Around 22,000 local women activists of BJP had spread across eight LS constituencies that had gone to polls in the fourth phase of elections on May 13 to draw female voters out of their houses to the polling booths on the voting day”, state BJP secretary Rajneesh Agrawal said.
The party had taken the innovative initiative of opening the women’s war room to boost female voting in the third and fourth phases after a dip in voting by women voters in the second phase of LS elections in the state, sources said.
The second phase of polling, held on April 26, in which six LS constituencies had gone to polls, had witnessed a dip in voting percentage by 9.05 percent to 61.54 percent over the last LS elections.
Indifference of female voters marked the low polling in the second phase of elections with the voting percentage of women falling by a whopping 11 percent to 55.37 over the last LS elections.
This prompted the state BJP leadership to roll out a strategy to draw female voters to the booths by undertaking different mass contact programmes in the two successive phases of elections.
Following this, the female voting percentage in the third and fourth phases of elections had climbed to 63.53 and 64.24 respectively.
This also boosted the average polling in the third and fourth phases to 66.75 percent and 66.87 percent respectively.
The four-phase LS polls in Madhya Pradesh in which 29 seats had gone to polls came to an end on May 13.
