Bhubaneswar: With Odisha set to enter into the fourth phase of elections April 29, the state, especially the Capital city, has recorded a surprisingly low turnout of the third gender voters.
In the third phase of elections, the six parliamentary constituencies in Sambalpur, Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Cuttack, Puri and Bhubaneswar observed a total of 71.61% voter turnout.
While out of 47.9 lakh men 34.2 lakh voted, a total of 32.06 lakh women cast their votes out of a total of 44.5 lakh. However, out of 1,161 third gender voters, only 100 exercised their polling rights.
While this low voter turnout has been observed all over the state, the Capital city in particular, which has the highest number of third-gender voters, has recorded the poorest turnout followed by its twin city Cuttack.
Khurda has the highest number of voters (548) registered for the third-gender category out of which 526 voters belong to the three assembly constituencies in Bhubaneswar alone. This is followed by Cuttack where 253 third gender voters are registered.
However, Bhubaneswar saw only 49 third gender voters cast their vote while Cuttack had only a meager 20 visiting the polling stations.
Citing lack of proper inclusion, experts say that a large number of third gender people, including transgenders and eunuchs, are yet to be included in the electoral list. “There are six or seven times more third gender people than the voter list suggests. While social taboo is one of the reasons, lack of redressal of their grievances is a major cause for their low turnout,” said Sabyasachi Panda, a transgender activist here.
Panda’s words can be corroborated from the fact that the electorate office of Odisha has pegged the total number of third gender voters at 2,932, but a 2014 census stated that the number crosses 20,000. Explaining the reasons for the low number of voters in elections, Lali Bhuiyan, a transgender here at Khandagiri said, “Most in our community are not tech savvy and familiar with the internet. Also there is a social stigma whenever we go to caste our votes.”
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