Bengaluru: Despite voicing their commitment to ensuring “reservation of 33 per cent of seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women”, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress have fielded only 12 and 11 candidates respectively, for this month’s Karnataka assembly elections. Both parties have announced 224 candidates each for the 10 May polls.
Which means women make up approximately about 5 per cent of the total number of candidates for both parties taken together.
The thirty-three per cent quota has been proposed in the women’s reservation bill that was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010, but was never voted on in the Lok Sabha, and has been in cold storage since. Demands to table the bill in the Lower House have again gained currency in the past few months.
The Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S), the other major party in Karnataka, has 13 women in a list of 224 candidates it has fielded for the upcoming elections along with its alliance partners.
According to women leaders, all three parties have continued to focus on caste, winnability and local equations of candidates, rather than on achieving gender equality.
In April this year, Karnataka Congress general secretary Kavitha Reddy, a ticket aspirant from the state’s Bommanahalli constituency, had said that denial of candidature to her was a “grave injustice”.
Pushpa Amarnath, president of the Karnataka unit of the Congress’s mahila morcha, told ThePrint: “It’s not about ensuring tickets to women on women’s quota — the main thing is that the Congress should come to power. Winning is the criteria.”
Amarnath herself was a ticket aspirant, but the Congress leadership, comprising mostly men, decided against fielding her. “Without the women’s reservation bill, we can’t expect the women to get as many tickets as men,” she conceded.
In total, 2,613 candidates have been fielded by various political parties for the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls, of which only 185 are women.
Karnataka’s main political parties — the BJP, Congress and JD(S) — all have male state presidents and heads of the women’s wings are not part of the legislature.
There are currently 11 women legislators in the 224-seat Karnataka assembly, six of whom are from the Congress, three from the BJP, one from the JD(S) and one nominated member. Karnataka has never had a woman chief minister.
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‘Women empowerment’
Ahead of this month’s elections, the Congress has announced schemes to benefit women, which it has said it will implement if voted to power. These include the Gruha Lakshmi Scheme, under which cash assistance of Rs 2,000 per month will be given to every woman head of household in the state and free travel for women on public transport. According to the party, 1.5 crore women are expected to benefit from the Gruha Lakshmi Scheme.
But the Congress, which currently doesn’t have any woman working president, also doesn’t have a single woman in the Karnataka legislative council at present. In comparison, the BJP has three women in the state legislative council.
The party had, in a resolution adopted at its 85th plenary session held in Chhattisgarh this February, “committed to the creation of equal opportunities for women in education and employment and their socio-political-economic empowerment”.
The resolution added: “We will strive to pass the bill seeking 33 per cent reservation while ensuring that this is an inclusive reservation”.
In 2017, Congress national president Sonia Gandhi had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to pass the women’s reservation bill in Parliament, taking “advantage of the BJP’s majority in the Lok Sabha”.
The BJP manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections had also included the passing of the bill.
“The BJP is committed to 33 per cent reservation (for women) in Parliament and state assemblies through a constitutional amendment.”
The same commitment was part of the party’s manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Meanwhile, women leaders continue to complaint of being passed over for ticket distribution ahead of elections.
Last year, Reddy had slammed the Congress for its “patriarchy” and “injustice” in the context of selection of candidates for the legislative council elections in Karnataka.
“Are women not competent and capable?” Reddy had asked in a video posted on social media. “For the third time in a row, the Karnataka Congress has not given any representation to women in the legislative council. Even the seats which were vacated by women leaders were given to male leaders. It (leads to) serious questions… are women not competent and capable or are they taken for granted or are women leaders not required in the party?”
‘Caste and winnability looked at’
Election Commission (EC) data analysed by ThePrint for 150 assembly elections across states and six Lok Sabha elections (excluding by-elections for either assemblies or the Lok Sabha) held over the past 25 years had shown how women leaders or aspiring leaders have been side-lined across the country by political parties.
Of a total of 21,161 MLAs elected in the past 25 years across all states and Union Territories (those re-elected have been counted separately each time), only 1,584 were women, ThePrint’s analysis showed. This means that more than 92 per cent of all MLAs elected during this time were men.
The analysis also found that the average proportion of women elected in assembly polls between 1998 and 2023 has remained constant at 7-9 per cent.
When it comes to the Lok Sabha, women’s representation has seen a continuous rise over the past 25 years, from a mere 43 MPs in 1998 to 78 out of 543, or 14.4 per cent, in 2019.
“Till the time 33 per cent reservation is not enforced, this will be the state of affairs,” Geetha Vivekananda, BJP’s Karnataka mahila morcha president, told ThePrint.
She added: “They (party decision-makers) always look at caste and winnability (before distribution of tickets). This is a male-dominated society and only winnability is seen. Until there is reservation, this will continue”.
“There is no shortage when it comes to grooming women leaders, but at the time of ticket distribution, parameters other than gender take precedence,” Vivekananda further said.
(Edited by NIda Fatima Siddiqui)
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