LS polls: Major parties again fail to field women in race to parliament

'Very few women are asked (to stand for elections),' said Santosh Ahlawat, the only woman MP from Rajasthan, and a member of BJP

Women running for India’s parliament are barely a blip in the world’s biggest democratic exercise, which began last week and will play out in seven rounds, with results expected on May 23.

Women now make up just 11.8 percent and 12.8 percent of the total candidates nominated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main opposition Congress respectively, candidate lists show.

In a country led for years by a woman, the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, both major parties have long pledged backing for laws to reserve a third of parliamentary seats for women, but the numbers of