Karnataka will be voting tomorrow, drawing curtains to the month-long intense campaigning by major parties like Congress, BJP, and JD(S). All the parties have tried to entice half of the population, the women votes, by announcing schemes and benefits in their manifestos, but when it comes to actual representation, Karnataka lags behind.
According to the data, in the 40 years between 1978 and 2018, only 62 women have been elected to the Karnataka assembly. The data suggests that only 6 per cent of women in the fray were chosen to be representatives by the people. Added to this data is the fact that no woman has held the realm of Karnataka politics as chief minister of the state.
Among all these years, the year 1989 shows the highest number of women being elected. 10 women were elected in 1989, the lowest number is only one woman getting elected and that happened in the year 1983.
The data provided by ECI analysed by News18 shows that the past three polls only had 16 elected women representatives. Seven in 208, six in 203 and three in 2008.
The last assembly elections witnessed 219 women candidates in the fray out of which 200 lost their deposits, that is 92 per cent of the women candidates.
The story remains the same this year as out of the total 2,429 men contesting on the 224 seats, only 185 are women candidates.
BJP has fielded 12 women candidates and JDS has fielded 13 women and Congress has fielded 11 women. 64 candidates are running independently.