India General Elections 2024: What (young) women want

First time voters Mahek Savla and Praise Anchan, both 21

Young women voters turned up excitedly at the polling booths in Mumbai North Central constituency to exercise their franchise for the first time and fretted over the lack of water and absence of seating arrangements at the polling booths.

The voters also said that they had gathered information about their candidates and had researched well before casting their votes, "I had asked my family members about the candidates, my elder brother told me about the candidates and I checked their social media websites before coming. I made sure that I saw the symbol on the VVPAT machine before leaving the booth," said a 26-year-old first-time voter.

Women voters while speaking to mid-day said they had voted with a hope that the candidate would make Tilak Nagar better by solving core issues like arrangement of parking lots, providing libraries and arranging classes for extracurricular activities.

Ujwal Nikam from the BJP and Varsha Gaikwad from the INC are contesting from Mumbai North Central constituency. "If the water bottles were provided at the polling booths, I certainly didn't notice it. They should have kept it handy and accessible to the public. There was confusion among the volunteers about which senior citizen had to be taken to which booth, the system could have been better managed," said Mahek Savla, 21, who works as an internal auditor.

"I have voted with the hope that there will be changes in the taxation system. Women's safety and parking issues in the Tilak Nagar area have been prominent issues and I hope they are resolved soon," she added.

According to a 24-year-old woman, she faced difficulties in locating her polling booth. "There were no representatives and we had to locate polling booths by ourselves, I took help from my brother to locate the polling booth. It's so humid and the election commission did not provide water when I was present in the booth," she said.

While a 21-year-old woman voter said even as people were trying to find their booths there were long queues outside the booths, "There are seven polling booths however we weren't aware of which polling booth we were assigned to. I approached a representative and he guided me," she said.

Praise Anchan, 21, said that she took guidance from her father before casting a vote, "Since I am a first-time voter I had asked my father and he had made aware about how to cast my vote. It took me an hour to cast my vote, but the election commission should have created more awareness about how to vote," she said.