NEW GUJARAT HOUSE HAS FEWER WOMEN
The proportion of women MLAs (Members of Legislative Assembly) in Gujarat following the December election has fallen to seven per cent (13 MLAs), two percentage points lesser than nine per cent (16 MLAs) in the 2012 Assembly. Following the 2007 election, the Gujarat Assembly had 13 women MLAs, according to the Election Commission.
As many as 1,693 (93 per cent) of the 1,815 candidates were men, and only 122 ( seven per cent) were women in the 2017 election, as against 1,569 men (94 per cent) and 97 women (six per cent) in the 2012 Assembly poll. In the past five elections, the proportion of women candidates has varied between four per cent and seven per cent.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which retained power in Gujarat, fielded 12 female candidates, only six per cent of its 181 candidates. Of the 12, nine were elected, a strike rate of 75 per cent.
The Congress, which closely followed the BJP in the results, fielded 10 female candidates, also six per cent of its 176 candidates, and only four were elected, a strike rate of 40 per cent.
While women comprised seven per cent of Bahujan Samaj Party candidates, they were only two per cent of Nationalist Congress Party candidates. Only 13 of the 122 women candidates won the elections — a strike rate of only 10.6 per cent, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, an advocacy. In 12 of the 13 constituencies where women won, the closest opponent was a male candidate. In only Bhavnagar East, the main rival of BJP's Vibhavari Dave was Congress’s Nitaben Rathod. Dave won by a margin of 22,442 votes.
Among women candidates, Zankhana Hiteshkumar Patel of the BJP won Choryashi by the highest margin of 110,819 votes, while Sumanben Chauhan of the saffon party won Kalol constituency by only 1,982 votes.
Among all the states, Haryana has the highest proportion of women MLAs as they comprise 14.4 per cent (13) of the 90 member Assembly. It is followed by Rajasthan with 28 women MLAs — 14.1 per cent in the 199-member Assembly. The state also a women chief minister — Vasundhara Raje.
Nagaland and Mizoram, however, have no women MLA.