UP polls 2017: More women losing deposits, fewer winning elections

UP elections 2017 - Poor, populous Uttar Pradesh (UP) was the first Indian state to have a female chief minister–Sucheta Kriplani from 1963 to 1967–but this pioneering effort has not improved prospects for women in elections.

As voter turnout has risen, more competitors have stood against women candidates, fewer women have won and a growing number have lost their deposits, according to an IndiaSpend and Swaniti Initiative analysis of electoral data of the last three state elections in UP since 2002.


The only exception was for the seats reserved for scheduled caste (SC) candidates. The proportion of women winning SC seats was more than double that of those winning general seats.

All this happened over a period when women in India’s most populous state became healthier and better educated, reinforcing the point that there is no correlation between these indicators and better political representation of women.
States with the worst sex ratios have more women members of legislative assemblies (MLAs), as IndiaSpend reported in September 2015.

Roughly over the same period of our study, female literacy in UP grew from 42.2% in 2001 to 59.3% in 2011, and the sex ratio improved from 898 to 908, according to census data compiled by the NITI Aayog. (Read More)