Close to 400 of the 30,164 polling stations in the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka where voting was held on Thursday were staffed exclusively by women, an official said on Thursday.
“The 393 ‘sakhi’ (women’s) booths were staffed by 10 women, including 4 polling personnel, 3 assistants and 3 constables, with two outside and one inside the booth,” Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar told IANS here.
The maximum number of sakhi booths — 130 — were in Bangalore’s 3 parliamentary seats, followed by 46 in Bangalore Rural, 45 in
Udupi-Chikamagalur, 34 in Mysore, 30 inChikkaballapur, 28 in Mandya, 22 in Tumkur, 20 in Dakshina Kannada, 14 in Hassan and 12 each in Chitradurga and Kolar.
“The objective of all-women’s booths is to empower them and demonstrate their capability to conduct free and fair polling as in the case of men,” said Kumar.
