31% women contesting as independent candidates in Punjab elections

CHANDIGARH: Over 31% of women in the fray in the Punjab assembly elections are running as independent candidates while 30% are contesting on tickets of smaller parties, pointing out a lack of support from the mainstream parties.

The trend has been there for a while and the analysis of data of the last two assembly elections — 2017 and 2012 — also revealed that a substantial number of women candidates tried their electoral luck on independent tickets.

In the forthcoming elections, of the 1,304 contestants in the fight for 117 seats, 93 are women — accounting for 7.13% of total contenders. This, despite female electors constituting 47.44% of the total 2,14,99,804 electors in Punjab. Of these, 29 are independent candidates.

Similarly, in 2017, 80 contestants out of 1,126 (7.10%) were women, of which 32 (40%) had gone solo. In the previous elections, out of 1,049 in the poll fray, 83 (7.91%) were women and 37 (44.57%) fought as independents.

Besides 29 going independent, another 28 have been given tickets by smaller parties. Bahujan Mukti Party has fielded four women while Samajik Sangharsh Party,

Punjab National Party

and Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) have given tickets to three female candidates each and Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Party and Insaniyat Lok Vikas Party to two each.

Among the mainstream parties, the

AAP

has nominated 12 women, improving its last time count of eight. Like previous elections, Congress has given tickets to 11 women while SAD has picked five female contestants.

BJP has fielded six female candidates in comparison to two in the last elections. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has selected just one woman candidate while it had nominated two in the 2017 elections.

Political analyst Prof Ashutosh Kumar of

Panjab University

stated that this is typical of a patriarchal society where the male gets preference over the female. “Due to lack of support from parties, women interested in contesting elections are forced to run as independent candidates,” said Prof Kumar.

13% FACE CRIMINAL CASES

In comparison to just two candidates sharing their criminal record during the last elections, 12 (12.90%) female candidates have acknowledged criminal antecedents. The charges being faced include offences under NDPS Act, mining, cheating, snatching and SC\ST Act. AAP tops the list with seven candidates declaring their criminal antecedents while two independents and one each from SAD (Amritsar), SAD and BJP have shared details of their criminal cases in their nomination paper


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