New Delhi: Women’s organisations from across India assembled at Press Club of India to make a collective appeal to political parties to provide at least 33% tickets to female contestants, they also discussed about 11 points women’s manifesto “WOMANIFESTO” and requested every political party to endorse it.
The Press Conference was joined by many women activists including Ranjana Kumari, Asha Devi, Bulbul Das, Padmini Kumar, Tanya D’Souza and Gayatri Sharma.
The women’s manifesto created by women organisation focusing on the areas of women’s equal representation in Parliament gender budgeting, increasing health education and safety expenditure at National and local level, etc. Also distributed among the following parties to bring the issue into notice.
Addressing the Press Conference Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director, Centre for Social Research said, “National and regional parties need to give more tickets to women candidates in order to increase their number, and thereby influence policies that reflects womens historic development.”
Women activists claimed that India is one of the world’s worst countries in terms of women in politics, data shows that there are only 91 women representatives in both houses of parliament in India, in Lok Sabha out of the 542 members and only 64 are women in the Rajya Sabha, on the other hand there are only 27 female MP’s among 237 members India ranks at 153rd out of 193 countries in the study conducted by Inter-Parliamentary Union as of 1st December 2018.
Activists demanded that political parties should give general commitment towards the issues in the coming days, and field more women candidates.
