Do they give a fair chance to the fairer sex?
For all promises of their support to the stalled Women's Reservation Bill, ensuring 33 per cent of seats for them in legislatures, none of the main political parties has even given them as much representation while allotting tickets in the current general elections.
For all promises of their support to the stalled Women's Reservation Bill, ensuring 33 per cent of seats for them in legislatures, none of the main political parties has even given them as much representation while allotting tickets in the current general elections.
There are only 177 women among 2165 aspirants to the Lok Sabha fielded by all the national and state recognized parties, according to Election Commission figures.
Congress, headed by Sonia Gandhi, takes the honour of fielding the highest number of 45 women out of 417 candidates it has nominated. Percentage wise, however, this is just 10.79 or one third of what is targeted in the Bill.
The BJP is a distant second, having given tickets to just 30 women of the 364 seats (8.24 percent) it is contesting in the 543-strong House.
Following them is Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi party which has nominated 24 women of the 237 candidates (10.11 per cent) it has fielded across the country.
The Bahujan Samaj Party, which also has a lady in the lead and has fielded the highest number of 435 candidates, nominated only 20 women, including its supremo Mayawati. This comes to an abysmal 4.6 per cent.
Among the national parties in terms of percentage, the Left parties are ahead of the Congress on this count with the CPI-M having nominated 11.59 per cent or eight women among the 69 seats it is contesting these elections.
BJP's ally Shiv Sena in Maharashtra has three women among 56 contestants it has fielded in the country while Shiromani Akali Dal has only one woman among the ten seats it is contesting in Punjab.
In keeping with its opposition to the Women's Bill, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has only one woman nominee among the 41 candidates it has put up.
But those faring even poorly are 17 state and recognised parties that have not fielded a single woman. Prominent among them is Asom Gana Parisha (AGP) contesting 12 seats in Assam, the All India Forward Bloc, National Conference of Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir, PMK and MDMK in Tamil Nadu as also three state parties in Kerala.
Scoring a cent per cent on this count are United Goans Democratic party and the Manipur People's Party which have nominated women for the lone seats they are contesing in their states.
In the 1999 elections, out of a total of 247 women contestants only 48 made it to the Lower House, one of them was nominated by the President. Their strength in the dissolved house was 9.02 per cent.
In fact, never has their strength in Lok Sabha crossed 50, or ten per cent, the highest being in the dissolved house.