NEW DELHI: Only 31 women have been elected to the Delhi Assembly since the first election back in 1993. The abysmal numbers over the years are a cause of concern as they reflect the stark gender disparity when it comes to women representation in the national capital’s assembly.
Of the 31, Congress had highest number of women MLAs being 20. In the first and second Assemblies, in 1993 and 1998 respectively, the BJP had one female member in each term to the House, while no other party’s female candidate was ever elected to the House after that period.
In 1993, three women were elected to the House. While two of them were from the Congress, one was from the BJP. The two female Congress MLAs were Krishna Tirath and Tajdar Babar and that from BJP was Purnima Sethi. It is worth mentioning that Tirath has been fielded by the Congress again for the 2020 Assembly election from Patel Nagar Assembly.
The maximum numbers of women representatives were elected back in 1998, the year Sheila Dikshit became the Chief Minister of Delhi for the first time. The Assembly elected nine women for that term, out of which eight were from the Congress and one was from the BJP — Sushma Swaraj from Hauz Khas.
In 1998, BJP’s Sushma Swaraj was elected to the House after she served as the Chief Minister of Delhi in the first Assembly for a brief period just before the Assembly elections.