Guwahati, A lone woman out of the 12 in the fray in Assam made it to the Lok Sabha with the BJP’s Bijuli Kalita Medhi, a candidate of Guwahati constituency.
The BJP retained the seat but its sitting MP Queen Ojah, also the only woman to win the 2019 polls from the state, was replaced by Medhi who defeated Mira Borthakur Goswami, a female candidate of the Congress.
The 12 women candidates collectively polled 23,39,898 votes which is a mere 11.70 per cent of the total votes recorded in the just concluded elections.
The ruling BJP had given ticket to only Medhi while the opposition Congress had put up two candidates – Goswami in Guwahati and Roselina Tirkey in the Kaziranga constituency.
Among the smaller parties, the Gana Suraksha Party had given tickets to two women while the Hindu Samaj Party, Gana Sangram Parishad, SUCI and the Voters Party had given to one each. There were also three independents in the fray.
Kaziranga has put up the highest of three women candidates, followed by two each in Guwahati and Kokrajhar and one each in Sonitpur, Darrang-Udalguri, Nagaon, Barpeta and Dhubri.
Medhi polled 8,94,887 votes while her opponent secured 6,43,797 votes. Another Congress candidate Roselina Tirkey, who was defeated by Rajya Sabha MP Kamakhya Prasad Tasa in Kaziranga, got 6,48,096 votes.
Gana Suraksha Party’s Binita Deka polled 94,189 votes in Kokrajhar while her party colleague Swarna Devi secured 11,112 votes in Darrang-Udalguri and independent candidate Diluwara Begum Choudhury got 11,743 votes in Kaziranga constituency.
The remaining six candidates got less than 10,000 votes and forfeited their deposits.
The number of candidates contesting in the 2024 polls was also lower than the 14 in 2019 polls though women voters outnumber men.
The 12 candidates, comprised only 8.39 per cent of the 143 total contestants and were in the fray in only seven of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state where polling was held in three phases.
Assam has a total electorate of 2,45,72,144 with women comprising 1,23,39,241 as against 1,23,25,293 male voters but the number of women contesting the polls has declined significantly as compared to the previous two Parliamentary polls.
There has been a declining trend of women candidates with the highest of 16 candidates in the fray in 2014 but this came down to 14 in 2019 and further to 12 this time.
The number of women candidates representing the state so far has been only 19 since the first general elections in the country.
There has been, however, a remarkable increase in the participation of women voters in the polling process, registering a marginally higher turnout of 81.71 per cent as against 81.42 male while 18.81 per cent of the third gender in all three phases in the state.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
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