BJP Didn’T Meet 33% Quota In 21 Polls Since Women’S Reservation Bill Passage, Congress Met It Once—ADR

BJP Falls Short on Women Candidates in Recent Elections, Congress Only Achieves Quota Once

As discussions arise around a potential constitutional amendment for delimitation and women's reservation, a recent report sheds light on the performance of political parties regarding female candidate representation. An analysis of 39,789 candidates from the last Lok Sabha elections and 20 assembly elections since the passage of the 2023 Women’s Reservation Bill reveals that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not met the 33 percent requirement for women candidates in any of the 21 elections examined.

Interestingly, the Congress party emerged as the sole national party to achieve the 33 percent benchmark, successfully fielding this proportion of women candidates in the 2024 Sikkim elections. Overall, women comprised just 10.2 percent of all candidates, with 4,073 women participating in these elections. Alarmingly, the report notes that 28 percent of constituencies in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls did not feature any women candidates, totaling 152 out of 543.

The BJP's performance in the assembly elections was similarly stark, with only 217 out of 1,964 candidates—about 11.04 percent—being women. Jharkhand saw the highest representation at 18 percent, while elections in Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry saw no female candidates at all. Conversely, Congress fielded 229 women candidates, or 11.83 percent, from a total of 1,935. However, their lowest percentage appeared in the Jammu and Kashmir polls, where just 1 out of 39 candidates was a woman.

Overall, the report highlights a concerning trend: the lowest representation of women candidates was recorded in Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, both at just 5 percent in their respective 2024 elections. In contrast, the highest representation occurred in Delhi, Odisha, and Puducherry elections, where women's candidacy peaked at 14 percent.