BJD repeats 2019 trend: 6 of its 20 LS candidates are women, 1 seat to go

WITH PARTY president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday nominating Lekhasri Samantasunghar from Balasore, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha is again set to field 33% women in the Lok Sabha elections.

On International Women’s Day (March 8) this year, ex- bureaucrat and Naveen Patnaik's trusted aid eV KP and ian had assured women workers that the party would continue to reserve a third of all Lok Sabha seats for women in 2024.

The regional party has so far nominated six women out of the 20 names it has announced for various Lok Sabha seats. Besides Lek ha sr ii nb ala sore, the party has fielded women in Koraput, Aska, Jajpur, Balasore, Jagatsinghpur, Bhadrak and Bargarh. In comparison, the main opposition, the BJP, has fielded four women on Odisha's 21 seats.

The BJD — which had reached out to 22 national and regional parties in 2018 to build a consensus for the passage of the women’s reservation Bill, which was eventually passed in 2023 — had fielded 33% women candidates in the Lok Sabha for the first time in 2019. Of its seven women candidates, five had won.

In panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies, the BJD government had in 2012 already increased the reservation for women to 50%, from the 33% that had been implemented by his father and ex-cm bij up at naik in the early 1990s.

The BJD on Thursday also announced candidates for nine Assembly seats, thereby clearing names for 117 of the 147 assembly segments in the state, which will go for simultaneous polls.