1. 2024 Sikkim elections: 12 women candidates out of 146 despite 50% female voters.
2. Voting scheduled for April 19; 4.66 lakh voters, 2.31 lakh women.
3. The state has 32 Assembly seats, a lone Lok Sabha constituency.
Gangtok, April 05: In the upcoming Sikkim Assembly elections and the lone Lok Sabha seat, only 12 women candidates are among the 146 nominees, despite women comprising nearly 50 percent of the voters in the state.
Sikkim, with 32 Assembly seats and a single Lok Sabha constituency, will hold voting on April 19, with a total of 4.66 lakh voters, of which 2.31 lakh are women.
In the outgoing Sikkim Legislative Assembly (SLA), there were only three women MLAs, indicating a significant underrepresentation of women in state politics.
The ruling Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) has fielded four women candidates, including Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang’s wife Krishna Kumar Rai, marking a slight increase compared to the previous elections.
Other parties like the Citizen Action Party (CAP-Sikkim), BJP, and the Congress have also nominated women candidates, albeit in smaller numbers.
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Surprisingly, the leading opposition party, Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), has not fielded any women candidates this time, a departure from its previous strategy.
In the lone Lok Sabha constituency, a woman named Bina Rai is contesting as an independent candidate, reminiscent of Dil Kumari Bhandari, who last represented Sikkim in Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1996.
