Karnataka: Youngsters wait for a toehold as seniors stay put in Assembly

Congress members celebrate election win in front of the Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru on Sunday, May 14, 2023. DH Photo/S K Dinesh

The number of MLAs aged above 60 years has increased while those in the age groups of 41-60 and 25-40 years has declined, as per the profile of the new Assembly by PRS Legislative Research.

In 2018, 29 per cent of the 224 MLAs were in the 61-80 year bracket, which has now gone up to 35 per cent. At the same time, there was a six percentage point decline in the number of those in the 41-60 age group. When it comes to those aged below 40, the Assembly already had a poor record at 8 per cent, which has now dropped to 7 per cent.

One of the reasons cited by observers is that senior leaders prefer to get reelected instead of making way space for youngsters.

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Ashwin Mahesh, who chaired the manifesto committee of the AAP, said an ideal Assembly should have mixed representation, including women. “Politics has become a business and a lifelong career where personal interest overshadows public interest. Many of these MLAs would have retired had there been genuine pressure from the public to deliver,” he said.

The BJP’s experiment to field 75 “new” faces included several youngsters. However, Mahesh pointed out that the decision was more to do with anti-incumbency rather than the idea of fair representation. “Personally, I believe there should be a limit on the number of times a candidate can get elected. This will allow more people to compete for the job,” he said.

Among the parties, the Congress has more seniors, led by Shamanur Shivashankarappa, aged 92. Bagalkot MLA HY Meti (77) and Siddaramaiah (75) are among the known names in the group.

In the BJP, M Chandrappa of Holalkere (71) and Araga Jnanendra (70) are in the category. In the JD(S), there are three aged above 70 including G K Venkatashivareddy (76) and G T Devegowda (73).

While the number of elected women has gone up from eight to 10 in this Assembly, a historical view shows that Karnataka still has a long way to go.

“In every election since 1962, less than 5 per cent of those elected to Karnataka Assembly have been women,” the PRS study of general Assembly election results said.

Interestingly, there has been a drop in the number of women candidates who contested the election. In 2018, 212 women contested the election, which came down to 184 this year.