Eleven women have been elected to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly; Maximum five from BJP, four from Congress and none from JD(S). An independent candidate was also elected to the House. (Image: News18)
If the long-pending demand of 33% women’s reservation in legislatures is met, the Karnataka Legislative Assembly would have at least 74 women. Since 1978, only 73 women have been elected to the House, including 11 in this position.
There may be a slight improvement in the representation of women in the Karnataka assembly elections as compared to the last few elections, but it is still well below the 10 per cent mark. Even though Karnataka has not had a woman Chief Minister till date, but this time there is little chance of it happening.
Major political parties in India have called for an increase in the representation of women and have verbally supported the 33 percent women’s reservation bill. But when it comes to giving space to women in their own parties, the picture remains grim, according to Election Commission of India (ECI) data analyzed by News18.
The three main political parties – the BJP, the Congress and the JD(S) fielded some women. The JD(S) named 13 women while the BJP released 12 and the Congress with only 11 women candidates. At least 64 women candidates contested as independents.
In the results announced on Saturday (May 13), a total of 11 women have been elected to the 224-member Legislative Assembly; Maximum five candidates from BJP, four from Congress, one from JD(S) and one independent candidate were elected to the assembly. In the last assembly elections in 2018, seven women were elected to the house, while earlier, in 2013, six were elected.
Women were under-represented in terms of the total number of candidates in the fray. Of the 2,615 candidates in the fray, only 185 were women, and of these, only 11 made it to the House.
If the long-pending demand of 33 per cent reservation for women in legislatures across India were to be met, the Karnataka Assembly would have at least 74 women. But the state could not even elect so many women in the last 45 years. Only 73 women, including 11, have been elected to the House during this term. It was in 1989 that the last time the state had double-digit representation of women in the assembly when 10 women were elected.
Political parties have long promised 33 per cent reservation for women in legislatures. The Congress had made this promise in its manifestos for the 2019, 2014 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections. BJP also did the same in 2019 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But these parties could not fulfill the promise and the number of women MPs and MLAs is very less all over India.
In the last 20 years, or the last four assembly elections, only 33 women have made it to the state assembly.
While the data on the number of candidates who lost their deposits for this assembly election is yet to be made public, at least 92 per cent women candidates lost their deposits in the last election. Moreover, between 1978 and 2018, 83 per cent women candidates lost their deposits, which is 864 out of 1,040 women candidates.
What makes Karnataka interesting is that women voters outnumber men in at least 50 per cent of the seats. And this has been the picture for the last few decades. In 1978, about 50 percent of the voters in the state were women and the voting percentage was about 68 percent. For men, the turnout percentage was 76 per cent. In 2023, out of 5.30 crore voters in the state, 2.63 crore were women and 2.66 crore were men.
Between 1978 and 2023, at least 22,170 candidates contested assembly elections in Karnataka. Of these, only 1,225 were women.
