E-Paper
Three women make it to 90-member J&K House
The trio include Shagun Parihar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sakeena Masood and Shamim Firdous of the National Conference (NC)
At least three women have made it to the reorganised 90-member Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly, results of which were declared on Tuesday.
The trio include Shagun Parihar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sakeena Masood and Shamim Firdous of the National Conference (NC).
Sakeena Masood, a former minister, won DH Pora assembly seat in Kulgam district. She polled 36,623 votes and had an impressive victory margin of 17,449 votes against her nearest rival, Gulzar Ahmed Dar of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Masood had earlier won the Noorabad seat twice in 1996 and 2008 and also remained a minister in the NC government.
BJP’s Shagun Parihar, 29, daughter of Ajit Parihar and niece of Anil Parihar, who were killed by terrorists in Kishtwar on November 1, 2018, won the Kishtwar assembly seat.
The candidate polled 29,053 votes against her nearest rival SA Kichloo of the National Conference, who secured 28,532 votes. Shagun just sneaked past former NC minister Kichloo by a thin margin of 521 votes. Kichloo had previously won the seat in 2002 and 2008.
Shamim Firdous of the National Conference won the Habbakadal seat. She defeated BJP candidate Ashok Kumar Bhat by a margin of 9,538 votes. She polled 12,437 votes against Bhat’s 28,99 votes.
The NC leader had previously held the Habbakadal seat in both 2008 and 2014.
The three winners, however, comprise only 3.33% of the representation of the fair gender in the 90-member house.
There were a total of 41 women candidates in the fray, up from 24 women in the 2014 contest. The number was much higher at 67 in 2008.
