VIJAYAWADA: The claims of political parties that they are committed to the uplift of women and treating them on par with men seems to be far from true when it comes to distribution of tickets. Major political parties like TDP and YSRC have allocated less number of seats to women even though there are more number of female voters than their male counterparts.
As per electoral rolls published on January 11, the number of voters in the State stood at 3,69,33,091, of which the number of female voters (1,86,04,742) are more than male voters (1,83,24,588). However, the number of voters may go up by over 9 lakh after the Election Commission which is processing over 10 lakh Form 6 applications, will soon release the supplement voter list.
However, there was no comparison to the number of women voters and the seats allotted to them by the major political parties, including the TDP, YSRC and Jana Sena. Interestingly, all the parties are announcing their own plans for the welfare and development of women by denying them the opportunity to contest as MLAs.
While the TDP which released its candidates in three phases fielding women candidates from as many as 19 Assembly constituencies, the YSRC which declared the list of its candidates in one go, gave the opportunity to 15 women. Jana Sena, which announced candidates for 119 constituencies so far fielded just 12 women.
Women Commission chairperson N Rajakumari said that a legislation was made to provide 33% quota to women as there is chance for continuation of male dominance in the village and mandal level. Stating that all political parties mandated to give tickets to SCs and STs as per the reservations provided to them to fulfil the Constitutional provision, she said there is no priority for women despite their number is more than male voters.