For the first time in the history of Haryana, a maximum of 13 female candidates have been declared elected out of a total of 116 women candidates who contested the Assembly polls.
The elections were held for a total of 90 seats of Haryana Vidhan Sabha. A maximum of eight female candidates of BJP were declared elected followed by three of Indian National Congress and one each of INlD and HJC.Five of these elected female candidates have again returned as members of the legislative Assembly. These included two former Congress’ Ministers namely Geeta Bhukkal and Kiran Choudhary. The other three are Renuka Bishnoi, Shakuntla Khatak, Santosh Chauhan Sarwan and Kavita Jain.
Apart from them, other female candidates who have won the assembly election included Santosh Yadav, Seema Trikha, Naina Singh Chautala, latika Sharma, Rohita Rewari, Bimla Chaudhary and Prem lata.
As per the data with Election Commission, a total of 93 female candidates had contested the general elections to Haryana Vidhan Sabha in 1996 and out of them only four were elected. This was followed by 68 in 2005 when 11 female candidates were elected. As many as 49 female candidates contested in the year 2000 and out of them four were elected.Interestingly, in the first assembly elections of the state held in 1967, only eight female candidates had contested and out of them only four were declared elected.In 1968 only 12 women had contested and seven of them were declared elected.
As many as 20 and 12 female candidates contested in the years 1977 and 1972 respectively and out of them four each were elected.In the year 1991, 41 female candidates contested and only six of them were elected. Similarly in 1987, 35 female candidates contested the assembly polls and five of them were elected. In 1982, as many as 27 female candidates had contested and seven of them were elected.
Among those women who contested the assembly elections in 2014, 10 represented the Indian National Congress, 16 contested as candidates of INlD, 15 of BJP, 5 of HJC (Bl) and six as candidates of Bahujan Samaj Party. Among others, 12 women had contested as candidates of Haryana lokhit Party and 4 of Haryana Jan Chetna Party (V).
According to votes polled in 2014, candidate Rohita Rewari of BJP who contested from Panipat city polled a maximum of 63.5 per cent votes. A minimum of 30.3 percent votes were in favor of Santosh Chauhan Sarwan of BJP who contested from Mullana.