HYDERABAD: Of the 21 women candidates this year, six of which were fielded by the three major political parties in Telangana, only one will represent the State in the 17th Lok Sabha term. Maloth Kavitha, the TRS candidate from Mahabubabad won a Lok Sabha seat from India’s youngest State and that too with a margin of close to 1,45,740 votes over and above her Congress counterpart. Maloth, a member of the Tribal community and former MLA, is also the daughter of the incumbent MLA Redya Nayak. The performance of other women, meanwhile, was extremely dismal, despite the fact that most of them were experienced politicians and/or backed by strong parties.
The biggest shocker came from Nizamabad, a constituency with more women voters than men, where sitting the MP and TRS leader, K Kavitha lost by over 50,000 votes to BJP’s D Arvind.
Meanwhile, the opposition camp of the BJP also witnessed the fall of a senior woman politician, DK Aruna, a local to the Mahbunagar region. She bagged trailed behind the TRS leader, Manne Srinivas Reddy by nearly 1 lakh votes. The voters however had no regards for the fact that she was a three-time MLA and a former minister.
Another veteran woman politico from the State, Congress party’s contestant from Khammam, Renuka Chowdhary also came in second to her TRS counterpart, falling short by a margin of 14 per cent.
Other women candidates like BJP’s Bangaru Shruthi from Nagarkurnool managed to fetch only 13.01 per cent of the vote share while CPI(M)’s Mallu Laxmi from Nalgonda managed only two per cent of vote share.
62.55% women voted
The year 2019 had more women candidates at 21, up from 18 in 2014. But like 2014, just one woman made the cut this year as well. It must be noted that 62.55 per cent women turned up to vote this year in TS