Lok Sabha elections 2019: No woman candidate in fray for Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat

Not a single woman candidate will be contesting the Gurgaon parliamentary seat this election season, and all 25 candidates for the seat are men. In comparison to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the number of male candidates has gone up, while the number of female candidates has drawn a blank this year.

In 2014, only one woman had contested as an independent candidate while 22 male candidates were in the fray. This year, four women candidates had filed their nominations, but each of them was rejected on different grounds on Wednesday by the returning officer and deputy commissioner Amit Khatri during scrutiny of the applications. The nominations of Shakuntala, wife and backup candidate of Congress candidate Ajay Singh Yadav, and Manita Singh, wife and backup candidate of BJP candidate Ajay Singh Yadav were rejected after the nominations of the primary candidate were found valid. The nomination of the Daksh Party’s candidate Pooja Tyagi was rejected on similar grounds.

If the nomination of a contestant is found to be valid, the backup candidate is treated as an independent candidate and requires 10 proposers. Shakuntala, Manita Singh, and Pooja Tyagi did not have the requisite number of proposers, due to which their nominations were rejected.

The nomination of Bahujan Mukti Party’s candidate Rachna was cancelled on account of an incomplete form. She had not filled the second part of the nomination form.

Tara Krishnaswamy, co-founder of Political Shakti, a non-partisan group working towards getting more women elected in state and central governments, said, “While it is shocking to know that no woman will be contesting, it is not unusual if one looks at the national picture. Even in states with a high human development index (HDI), women are not represented adequately in politics. Political parties do not give tickets to women, and there are few independent women candidates due to economic constraints.”

She added that fewer tickets distributed to women meant that they were being denied political equality. “The constitution mentions political equality for all. However, the Election Commission does nothing to pressurise parties into changing that,” Krishnaswamy added.

First Published: Apr 25, 2019 00:38 IST