Gradual decline in Assam women MLAs continues, just six emerge victorious in 2021

Express News Service
GUWAHATI: There has been a steady decline in the number of elected women representatives in the Assam Assembly in recent years.

Altogether 74 women had contested the Assembly elections, the results of which were declared on Sunday, and only six emerged victorious.

These 4.76% of the legislators in the 126-member House will represent 49.30% women voters. The 74 women were among the state’s 946 candidates or 7.82% of total contestants.

The six winners included three from the BJP, two from the Congress and one from the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). They were the BJP’s Ajanta Neog, Suman Haripriya and Nandita Garlosa, the Congress’s Nandita Das and Sibamoni Bora and the AGP’s Renupoma Rajkhowa. While Neog, Haripriya, Das and Rajkhowa got re-elected, Garlosa and Bora are first-timers.

Neog, a three-time former Congress Cabinet minister, had defected to the BJP ahead of the elections.

The state’s longest-serving woman MLA, Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), was among the losers. She was a Cabinet minister in the previous Tarun Gogoi Congress government as well as the Sarbananda Sonowal government.

The Congress had fielded the highest number of women candidates at nine, followed by SUCI (C) eight, BJP seven, Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP) seven and AGP two. The All India United Democratic Front, BPF and Rashtriya Janata Dal had fielded one each. There were also 24 Independent candidates.

In the 2016 elections, 91 women had contested and eight of them won. In the 2011 polls, 71 contested with 14 emerging winners. Thirteen women were elected in 2006.

According to Bobbeeta Sharma, who is the chairperson of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee’s media cell, the problem is that the desired number of women representatives is still elusive in Assembly elections.

“However, as far as the Congress party is concerned, women representation is by and large more than other parties. But it is yet to be 33%. It is observed that adequate women representation in Assembly and Parliament will happen only when there is a law for its implementation. This can happen only when the Women Reservation Bill is passed,” she said.