Five women candidates, including outgoing Chief Minister Atishi won in the Delhi Assembly polls this time, down from eight in the 2020 elections.
Atishi is the only woman candidate of AAP who won this time. She retained her Kalkaji seat, defeating the BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri by a margin of 3,521 votes.
The BJP’s four women candidates — Rekha Gupta from Shalimar Bagh, Poonam Sharma from Wazirpur, Neelam Pahelwan from Najafgarh, and Shikha Roy from Greater Kailash — have emerged as victorious.
Of the total 699 candidates in the fray this time, 96 were women. Five years earlier, 672 candidates fought the Assembly polls and of them 76 were women. Eight women candidates had won in the 2020 Assembly polls.
Among the three key political parties in the elections, the BJP and AAP had fielded nine women candidates each whereas the Congress had seven women nominees. All three parties fielded more women candidates this time than the 2020 Assembly polls.
The BJP on Saturday returned to power in Delhi after more than 26 years to sweep away the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party with a two-thirds majority on the back of a hyper-localised campaign and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘AAP-da'(disaster) blitzkrieg.
