With the Women’s Reservation Bill being passed in Parliament last year, the debate on whether quota within political parties or in Parliament and State Assemblies may be the best route for increasing women’s representation in politics seems to have come to an end. The Assembly elections in Rajasthan showed that the only way for increasing women’s political participation seems to be to provide them reservation in Parliament and State Assemblies. In the elections, the women candidates of both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up dismal performances.
The case of Rajasthan
In the Rajasthan Assembly elections, everyone highlighted and criticised the ticket distribution to women by all political parties. But how did the women who contested perform? Rajasthan has 200 Assembly seats but polling was held in 199 seats following the death of Congress candidate Gurmeet Singh Kooner. The BJP fielded 20 women candidates of which nine managed to enter the Assembly. The success rate of women candidates of the BJP remained 45%, which was much lower than the success rate of the party’s male candidates — 60% (106 male candidates won out of the 179 who contested).
