The youth and women voters who are in considerable numbers in the Pithoragarh assembly segment would cast their influence in the result of the crucial by election.
In the election about 53 per cent of the total electorate of 1,05,711 are young voters below the age of 40 years. Apart from youth the constituency has 52,796 women voters which is almost equal to male voters whose number is 52,917.
Incidentally Pithoragarh is one of the few constituencies in the state where the number of male and female voters are almost same.
In this by election, both Congress and BJP have fielded women candidates. The Congress candidate is Chandra Pant who is the widow of former finance minister Prakash Pant. Chandra Pant resigned from her job in the education department to take the electoral plunge. The strategy of the Congress party is to extract the electoral mileage by invoking sympathy of people for Late Prakash Pant. After initially dithering on selection of candidate, the Congress has given ticket to Anju Lunthi. Apart from being a protégé of local heavyweight and former MLA, Mayukh Mahar, Lunthi has been in politics for quite some time. She is a two time Block President and belongs to an influential family.
