NEW DELHI, November 8: In spite of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee reiterating Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) commitment to women's reservation, the party has fielded only five women candidates for the Delhi Assembly polls. Arch rival Congress, on the other hand, has given tickets to double the number. Women, however, would lead the election campaign for both the parties with Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj and Delhi Congress unit President Shiela Dikshit to be the torch-bearers during the fortnight-long campaign.Congress spokesperson and Mahila Congress President Ambika Soni said the party had given tickets to more women this time than in 1993 when seven women were nominated.
"We have tried our best to give them (women) more representation," she said.V.K. Malhotra, president of the Delhi BJP election campaign committee, admitted that the party had not given as much representation to women as it should have.
"There are no two opinions about it. We should have nominated more women, but it simply did not work," he said.
Besides Dikshit, Congress has nominated Kiran Walia (Hauz Khas), Anjali Rai (Paharganj), Tajdar Babbar (Minto Road), Krishna Tirath (Baljit Nagar), Kiran Singh (Model Town), Kiran Choudhury (Delhi Cantonment), Meera Bhardwaj (Mandawli), Sarla Kaushik (Shalimar Bagh) and Sushila Devi (Sultanpuri Majra).
BJP has fielded Sushma Swaraj (Hauz Khas), Poornima Sethi (Kalkaji), Jyotsna Aggarwal (Shahdara), Shashi Prabha Arya (Rajouri Garden) and Nirmal Khandelwal (Paharganj).
BJP had a lone woman representative, Poornima Sethi, in the outgoing 70-member House while Congress had two Tajdar Babbar and Krishna Tirth.
The Congress has renominated 13 MLAs and denied tickets to five. Its list also includes 13 each from the minorities and scheduled castes and 10 from the backward classes.
The BJP on its part dropped 15 MLAs but doubled the number of Sikh candidates to four following a reported request from Akali Dal (Badal), which decided not to field any candidate of its own.
Malhotra justified dropping several sitting MLAs saying "new faces should come forward".
On the inadequate nomination of minorities, he said the party was unable to find candidates with "winning capabilities".
As many as 1,051 candidates have filed nomination for the November 25 elections but a total of 935 were left in the fray after scrutiny yesterday. Tomorrow is the last date for withdrawal of candidature.
In the 1993 Assembly elections, 1,316 candidates were in fray with BJP, Congress and Janata Dal contesting all the 70 seats.
BJP registered a landslide victory winning 49 seats garnering 42.82 per cent of votes polled.
Congress and Janata Dal managed to get merely 14 and four seats respectively with vote share of 34.48 per cent and 12.65 per cent. Three independents also registered a win.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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