Exit polls for the Rajasthan Assembly Election 2018 predicted a clear majority for Congress. Although Rajasthan is among the few states with the highest representation of women in its state Assembly, the state failed to nominate even a single woman candidate in at least 83 Assembly constituencies, an analysis of the final list of candidates shows.
The number of candidates is marginally up at 189 from 166 in 2013 polls, but it’s meagre 8.3 percent of the total candidates in the fray in the elections, scheduled to take place on 7 December. In a state with 22 million women voters, that translates to an abysmal ratio of one women candidate every 1.16 lakh women voters.
This is despite the fact that Rajasthan is one of the only two states in India, which currently have a woman serving as the chief minister of the state.
Based on the final list of candidates, Congress tops the list with the party fielding 26 women candidates in the polls. BJP, whose chief ministerial faces is Raje, comes second with 23 women candidates followed by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) with 15 candidates. Former BJP leader Hanuman Beniwal’s Rashtriya Loktantrik Party has fielded 11 women candidates followed by nine women candidates each from the Aam Aadmi Party and Independents.
The ratio of women candidates to total candidates since the first Rajasthan Assembly election in 1952, the number of women candidates contesting the election has been increasing, though marginally (it was seven percent in 2008 and 7.9 percent in 2013 and 8.3 percent in 2016). At this rate, it would take another 90 years to reach 20 percent and 315 years to reach a stage where the number of women candidates is equal to that of men.
