Raj’s royal women triumphant in election battles for Parliament

Jaipur: It took ten years to elect a woman to Parliament from Rajasthan after the first general elections were held in 1952 in the country. The distinction goes to erstwhile Jaipur royal Maharani Gayatri Devi, who in the 1962 elections contested as a Swatantra Party candidate and defeated her nearest rival from the Congress, who also happened to be a woman, Sharda Devi, to win the Jaipur Lok Sabha seat.Gayatri Devi repeated her feat in the next general elections in 1967 and 1971. The distinction of the largest number of victories by a woman candidate from Rajasthan goes to former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. Since her first victory in 1989 from Jhalawar, Raje never looked back and continued her triumphant march in the next four general elections in 1991, 1996, 1998, and 1999, all from Jhalawar, before shifting to state politics.Congress leader Dr Girija Vyas is next to Raje with four victories to her credit, and then is Congress leader Nirmala Devi, who won twice from Chittorgarh seat.Along with Gayatri Devi , the other women elected to Parliament from Rajasthan in 1971 was Krishna Kumari, spouse of Maharaja Hanuwant Singh and the titular regent of Marwar-Jodhpur. She was elected to Parliament as an independent candidate in 1971.Interestingly, in 1991, three members of erstwhile royal families of Rajasthan were elected to the Lok Sabha on a BJP ticket. They were Mahendra Kumari (Alwar), Krishnendra Kaur (Bharatpur) and Vasundhara Raje (Dholpur). Congress’s Girija Vyas (Udaipur) was also elected to the Lok Sabha in the same year. This election holds the distinction of electing the highest number of women Parliamentarians. The latest to join the legion of royal women in politics is Diya Kumari, of the erstwhile Jaipur royal family, who won the Rajsamand seat in the last Parliament elections.From just two women candidates in the fray in the first general elections in 1952, women in the arid state have come a long way in their participation in the Lok Sabha polls. In 2019, 23 women contested the LS polls, which was marginally lower than the state’s highest tally of 29 women candidates in the 2009 elections. In both 2009 and 2019, only three women contested the polls successfully.

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