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Lok Sabha Election Results: New Lok Sabha Will Have Fewer Women

Lok Sabha Election Results: Seventy three women have been elected in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, down from 78 in 2019, far below the 33% target of the Women’s Reservation Bill.

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Lok Sabha Election Results: New Lok Sabha Will Have Fewer Women | Representative image | Photo courtesy: Priya Darshan, iStockphoto.com

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Lok Sabha Election Results: New Lok Sabha Will Have Fewer Women

The Women’s Reservation Bill allocates 33% of all seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures for women. However, only 13% of the Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the 18th Lok Sabha are women. Of 543 elected MPs, 73 are women, marking a decrease from the 78 women elected to the 17th Lok Sabha.

The gender gap in elected representatives begins with the disparity among candidates. Of the 8,337 candidates who stood for election, 797 were women. Although the total number of women candidates increased by 10% from 720 in 2019, their share among total candidates only rose marginally, from 9% in 2019 to 9.5% in 2024. 9% of these 797 women won.

The Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023 was introduced in Lok Sabha on September 19, 2023. This Bill aims to reserve one-third of the seats in Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women. The reservation will become effective after the first census conducted following the enactment of this Bill. The last census was in 2011. The 2021 census is now three years delayed. Whenever the next census happens, based on the results, delimitation will be undertaken to reserve seats for women, with the reservation lasting for 15 years.

The Bill specifies that reserved seats will be allocated by rotation after each delimitation exercise, which is expected to occur approximately every 10 years, as delimitation is mandated after every census post-2026.

A study (2008) by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj recommended

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