Meghalaya's autonomous council polls: Women make up 7% of candidates
Despite women outnumbering men in voters list, only 19 out of 272 candidates contesting the polls are female.
Shillong, Feb 5: In matrilineal Meghalaya, less than 7 per cent female candidates are in the fray for the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council elections scheduled on February 21.
For both the council elections, 272 candidates have filed their nominations and out of this total there are just 19 female candidates and rest are male.
There are 158 candidates who have filed their nominations for the Khasi Hill Autonomous District Council (KHADC) elections and their papers have been found valid after scrutiny. Out of this total there are only 12 female candidates and the rest are male.
Incidentally, East Khasi Hills district has the highest number of female candidates, with 6, if all the districts and sub-divisions are taken into consideration. East Khasi Hills also has the highest number of candidates filing their nominations with 83 candidates in all.
The number of female candidates in some of the other districts are - Ri-Bhoi district 3 females and 23 males, West Khasi Hills district one female candidate and 18 males, Sohra subdivision one female and nine males.
Eastern West Khasi Hills district has one female, rest eight males, while in South West Khasi Hills district there is no female candidate con-testing and all 11 are male candidates.
The representation of women filing their candidature is similarly poor in the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council (JHADC) in which there are 114 candidates contesting and out of this total there are only 7 women candidates.
In Amlarem subdivision there are no female contenders out of the total 12 candidates. In West Jaintia Hills district there are just three female candidates out of the total 60 candidates. In East Jaintia Hills district there are four female candidates out of the total 42 candidates.
Ironically, there are more female voters than their male counterparts in the KHADC elections with 5,15,247 women voters compared to 4,81,268 male voters and three from the third gender.
Similarly, for the JHADC elections there are 1,61,220 female voters and 1,51,079 male voters and one from the third gender.