Newsroom, Mar 28: Women empowerment is a lip service for our national and regional parties. If you need any data to prove it, then look no further than Karnataka: There are just three women candidates in the poll fray from three major parties of the state for next month’s Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP, Congress and JD(S) have indeed given ‘equal representation’ to women, albeit only in that each has named a single woman candidate for the general election.
While the BJP has fielded incumbent Udupi-Chikkamagaluru MP Shobha Karandlaje from the same constituency, the Congress has named greenhorn Veena Kashappanavar from Bagalkot and the JD(S) Sunitha Chavan from Vijayapura constituency.
The fourth prominent woman, Sumalatha Ambareesh, is supported by the BJP but will contest as an independent from Mandya.
The best performance from Karnataka so far was in the last general election, when 11 of the 21 women contesting polls were from national parties and the JD(S).
The saffron outfit has also found itself in a precarious position by denying a ticket to late Union minister HN Ananth Kumar’s wife Tejaswini. Over the past 19 years, the BJP has not covered itself in glory as far as providing gender parity in disbursal of tickets goes, with an average of only two tickets to women per Lok Sabha election.
While parties claim that winnability is the supreme criterion during an election, women contenders believe that there is no dearth of winners among them.
Comments
Add new comment