Record number of women MLAs in UP

ALLAHABAD: The UP election results have come up with a heart-warming development – the best-ever show by women candidates.

A total of 41 women MLAs –the highest since Independence – have been elected to Uttar Pradesh assembly. This amounts to over 10% of the total strength of the house. Women have rarely found adequate representation in the assembly despite forming a substantial voter base in the state.

Women candidates fared well though major political parties had given tickets to only 96 women candidates. As many as 485 women candidates contested election, most of them as independents or fielded by smaller parties. The women MLAs include 35 from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), two each from the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) besides one from BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal).

As per the Election Commission records, 20 women MLAs were elected in the first UP assembly election in in 1952 but their strength started fluctuating since then. “Thirty-one women representatives were elected in 1985 but the number fell to 18 in 1985 and further down to 10 in 1991,” said political analyst and vice-chancellor of Uttar Pradesh Rajarshi Tandon Open University Prof MP Dubey.

The record of highest women MLAs, created in 2012 when the voters sent 35 to the assembly, was broken in this election with the count of 41. The credit for the biggest win by a woman candidate this time goes to Aditi Singh of Congress who bagged the Rae Bareli seat defeating Md Shahbaz Khan of BSP by a margin of 89,163 votes.

Prominent BJP winners include Swati Singh, state women’s wing chief of the BJP (Sarojini Nagar in Lucknow), Rita Joshi (Lucknow Cantonment), Garima Singh (Amethi), Neelam Karwariya (Meja in Allahabad) and Alka Rai (Mohammadabad in Ghazipur).

Pinki Yadav (Asmoli in Sambhal) will be the only woman MLA from the Samajwadi Party.