A Pak village where women never vote

Sixty years since its creation, a small village in Pakistan's Punjab province still upholds the wishes of its ancestors and does not let women vote.

Mohripur village, 70 km from Multan city, has about 7,000 registered women voters, none of whom has ever voted.

"We are following the decision of our ancestors, who had imposed a ban on women exercising their right of vote," Ghulam Mustafa Aulakh, an advocate from Mohripur, told Frontier Post.

Aulakh contested polls to the local body and lost by about 150 votes, but he never asked the womenfolk to support him. Over the years, a number of NGOs and rights organisations have tried to convince the men of Mohripur to send their women to vote. But so far they have had no success.

Interestingly,

the literacy rate in Mohripur is much higher than that in neighbouring villages. Mohripur's population of over 30,000 comprises people from Aulakh-Jatt, Sahu, Kamboh and Sargana biradaris or castes.

The Election Commission usually sets up four polling stations in the village, two each for men and women, for every election.

Noor Sultan Sahu, a patwari or record-keeper, says: "The elders of Sahu biradari had prohibited the women from casting their votes in 1947."

Other biradaris honoured the order and they are still complying with it. An NGO activist is optimistic that women might turn up to vote for the January 8 polls.

"I am optimistic that a few female voters would exercise their franchise," said Syed Anjum Raza.