In the upcoming Lok Sabha election, members of the transgender community are not only going to cast their first votes as the ‘third gender’, they are also actively creating awareness about election procedure.
Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Teeka Ram Meena on Friday inaugurated a help desk near the south gate of the Secretariat which will be managed by transgenders. It will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The volunteers will clear doubts regarding election procedures and the electronic voting machines and voter verifiable paper audit trail. The pavilion will give out leaflets prepared by the CEO’s office. The public can also listen to ‘Bharatha Bhagya Vidhathakkal Naam,’ the election song.
“For the first time, there are 174 third gender voters for the Lok Sabha elections. It took many awareness programmes to get them enrolled,” said Shyama S. Prabha, who has been deputed from the Social Justice Department to run the pavilion.
Though Shyama has voted before, she had been registered as a male. This is the first time that Shyama will be voting as a member of the third gender. Others at the pavilion include Sruthi Sithara and Heidi Sadia, a journalism student.
Of the 174 transgender voters this time, 16 are overseas voters. Thiruvananthapuram district has the most number of voters in this category: 48. Kozhikode has 34 and Thrissur, 26. Wayanad alone has no voter in this category. Three of the voters are aged between 70 and 90.
