WHAT IS THE SHARE OF MUSLIM WOMAN IN LOKSABHA ( LOWER HOUSE OF INDIAN PARLIAMENT)

The Election Commission’s statistical reports reveal that as far as representation of Muslim women in the Lok Sabha is concerned, there have never been more than three elected representatives in a House. As in the 15th Lok Sabha, there were three women members in the sixth and the eighth Lok Sabhas. In six Lok Sabhas (first, fourth, fifth, ninth, 10th and 12th), there was no Muslim woman member at all. Of the 549 women elected to the Lok Sabha since independence, only 18 have been Muslims.

If Muslim women are  represented in the House to the same extent as their share in the population, there would have been 440 MPs, or 40 times their actual number.

The Muslim women members in the current Lok Sabha are Tabassum Begum, Kaisar Jahan (both Bahujan Samaj Party) and Mausam Noor (Congress).

Majority of the Muslim women fought Lok Sabha elections as independent candidates, particularly from the seventh Lok Sabha elections onwards.

For instance, out of the nine Muslim women contestants for the seventh Lok Sabha, six were independents, two contested on the Indian National Congress ticket and one on the Janata Party ticket. All of them lost.

In the eighth Lok Sabha elections, out of the seven Muslim women candidates, five were independents, and one each belonged to the Congress and the Lok Dal. Only the Congress nominee got elected. Coming to the ninth Lok Sabha, out of the 11 women candidates, nine contested as independents and two as Congress candidates. In the 10th Lok Sabha, 14 Muslim women contested the elections, of whom six were independent candidates, two each were fielded by the Janata Party and the Janata Dal and one each by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Door Darshi Party (DDP), the Indian Congress Socialist (ICS), and the Congress. All of them lost.

In 1996 for the 11th Lok Sabha, a record number of 37 Muslim women tried their luck. The Congress fielded only two Muslim women (Mohsina Kidwai, a Congress loyalist, and Begum Noor Bano aka Mahatab Zamani of the royal family of Rampur), while the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Kranti Dal (BKD) and the Rashtriya Aikata Manch (RAM) nominated one each.

In the 12th Lok Sabha elections, a total number of 15 Muslim women contested, nine of them as independents, two on the Congress ticket and one each from the Janata Dal (J.D.), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Puthiya Tamizhagam (P.T.) and the Samata Party. However, none of them was elected.

In the 13th Lok Sabha elections, 26 Muslim women contested, of whom the number of women contesting as independents was again high. The BSP fielded three; the S.P., the JD (Secular) and the Congress two each; and the Janata Party, the P.T., the RJD, the Rajasthan Vikas Party, the Bharatiya Minorities Suraksha Mahasangh and the All India Minorities Front one each. (In 2004, out of 355 women contestants, 239 lost their deposits. Only 45 women got elected).

For the 14th Lok Sabha, the total number of Muslim women contestants was 21: six independents, three each from the BSP and the Congress, and one each from the S.P., the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the CPI(M), the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Samata Party, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party, the Samajwadi Jana Parishad, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and the Nav Bharat Nirman Party.

It appears from the above analysis that established national parties did not entertain Muslim women unless they already had a track record (as in the case of Mohsina Kidwai) or belonged to a dynasty with influence at the grass-roots level and the means to fight the election. The other national parties, including the Left, hardly showed any concern for representation of Muslim women. In comparison, though, the BSP and the Congress have given some space to Muslim women in this regard.