SWABI, May 2: Women belonging to families of the contesting candidates are conducting a door-to-door election campaign, encouraging the women to exercise their right to vote in May 11general election.

The campaigners told Dawn here on Thursday that it was the first time that women had initiated a full-fledged election campaign to mobilise female voters and win their support for the candidates belonging to their families.

No such campaign activity was witnessed in the previous general elections, while in the local government elections male members had mainly campaigned for the women candidates.

Sources in the district election commission office said that there are 304,588 women voters out of total 714,464 voters in the district.

In NA-12, Swabi-I, there are 151,169 female voters while in NA-13, Swabi-II, the number of female voters is 153,419.

There are 239 women polling stations and 17 combined polling station in the district. The sources said that female teachers of government schools had also been assigned the election duty.

However, there is no woman candidate among the total 112 contestants for the two seats of National Assembly and six seats of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in the district.

No one can deny that in previous elections the womenfolk in different regions of the district by and large did not exercise their vote right.

In local bodies elections the male contesting candidates and the jirga members had entered into verbal agreements that there would be no women polling.

“Numerous women polling stations were deserted in the local bodies’ elections here, as the leaders had entered into an agreement that there would be no women voting,” recalled Rohul Amin, president of Samajee Behbood Rabita Council.

“Now, the situation has changed and the women would no longer face restrictions. They could participate in the election process, but still if a man does not allow his wife how could she visit the polling station,” said Arif Shah, who advocates full participation of women in the election.

He said that there were still some cultural restrictions and the Taliban threat that could keep the women away from the polling stations.

“My mother would always say that polling vote is a useless exercise. I educated her on the significance of vote and she has finally agreed to use this right in coming election,” said a female lecturer.

The Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, Awami Jamhoori Ittehad Pakistan, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), Jamaat-i-Islami and JUI (Sami) still do not have fully functional women wing in the district.

The Awami National Party has a full-fledged district women wing, which is led by Yasmin Jaseem.

Meetings of the women officer-bearers are frequently held at her residence and women’s participation in voting process is thoroughly discussed.

When asked, Ms Yasmin said that they had contacted educated women in advance, wooing them to be either their polling agents or guide the woman voters outside the polling stations on the polling day.

“In many cases we approached husbands of the women and only after their green signal only a few of them showed readiness to assist us,” she said.

When contacted a female teacher said that women campaigners had been regularly visiting their homes.

She claimed that the campaigners belonging to Pakistan People’s Party had told them that their names would be adjusted in the BISP if they voted for their candidate.