Northeast Desk, 5th April: Despite comprising nearly 50 per cent of the voters, only 12 women candidates are contesting out of 146 nominees in the upcoming Sikkim Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
Sikkim, with 32 Assembly seats and a lone Lok Sabha constituency, will witness voting on April 19. The state boasts a total of 4.66 lakh voters, with women constituting 2.31 lakh of them.
In the outgoing Sikkim Legislative Assembly (SLA), there were only three women MLAs. However, in the last state Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, there were 15 women candidates.
The ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) has fielded four women candidates, including Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang’s wife Krishna Kumar Rai and former BJP member Rajkumari Thapa.
Another regional outfit, Citizen Action Party (CAP-Sikkim), has also nominated four women candidates, while BJP and Congress have two women candidates each.
Surprisingly, the leading opposition party, Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), has not nominated a single woman candidate this time, despite nominating four women candidates in the 2019 elections.
In the lone Lok Sabha constituency, where 14 candidates are contesting, Bina Rai is the only woman candidate running as an independent.
Dil Kumari Bhandari was the last woman to represent Sikkim in Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1996. However, the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women candidates in the current elections remain unclear as the SDF declined to comment on the matter.
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