Women voters queue up to cast their votes at a polling station.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Voters of Rajasthan will exercise their franchise on November 25 to elect their state legislators for the next five years. Results for the 200-member Assembly seats will be announced on December 3 along with those of four other states that have gone to polls this month, namely, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram. Both major parties, BJP and Congress, have shied away from fielding more women in polls. While Congress has given 28 tickets (14 per cent) to women candidates, BJP has only distributed 20 (10 per cent) tickets to women.
Let's take a look party-wise how the women candidates fared in 2018 elections in the state. A total of 189 women were in the fray and out of them 23 were from BJP and 27 from Congress.
Bhartiya Janata Party:
1. Senior BJP leader and former CM Vasundhara Raje won from her seat of Jhalrapatan by securing 116,484 votes, with 54.9% of votes.
2. Anita Bhadel, fielded by BJP from Ajmer South won by 69,064, with vote percentage of 50.8.
3. Kiran Maheshwari of the BJP was fielded from Rajsamand and won by 89,709 votes with 56.2% of votes.
4. Suryakanta Vyas of the BJP won from the Soorsagar seat by 86,885 votes. 49.6%
5. Sushil Kanwar of the BJP despite securing 82,634 votes, lost the Masuda seat to Congress candidate Rakesh Pareek. Pareek won 86,008 votes. She secured 45.1% of votes.
Congress:
Shakuntala Rawat of the Congress won from the Bansur seat by 39.4% votes when she secured 65,656 votes.
Girija Vyas, fielded by the Congress from Udaipur seat secured 65,353 votes but lost to BJP's Gulab Chand Kataria who won 74,660 votes.
Commonwealth Games gold medallist Krishna Poonia was fielded by the Congress from Sadulpur and won 70,020 votes. She won by 39.7% votes.
Zahida Khan was fielded by the Congress from the seat of Kaman and secured a whopping 110,789 votes, winning the election with a vote per cent of 58.4.
In 2023, out of the total 1875 candidates, the parties have given tickets to 183 women, signaling a drop in the number of female candidates from last time.