Despite a woman Chief Minister, the Delhi elections firmly establish the immediacy of the Women’s Reservation Bill
Despite women’s representation and welfare being a focus of the capital elections, women candidates won only 7 percent of the total seats - none from Dalit, Bahujan or Muslim communities. A recurring instance of the patriarchal arrangements of Indian politics, the results must draw our focus on the Women’s Reservation Bill, and why we cannot allow it to be stalled further.
Harsh Bodwal
Published on: 28 February 2025, 12:44 pm
REKHA Gupta’s appointment as the Chief Minister of Delhi marks a significant political moment, not just for the Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’), which has returned to power in the national capital after 27 years, but also for the broader discourse on women’s representation in Indian politics. The decision to elevate Gupta to the state’s top executive position came after eleven days of deliberation within the party’s high command, eventually making her the fourth woman Chief Minister in Delhi’s history, only the second to currently serve in the chief minister’s position nationwide. .
As she took the oath of office, in a grand ceremony at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan, accompanying Gupta were her six cabinet colleagues: Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, Ashish Sood, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Ravinder Indraj Singh, Kapil Mishra, and Pankaj Kumar Singh. Inconspicuously, they were all men. The optics of this moment vividly portrayed that while the appointment of a woman as Chief Minister was being celebrated as a step toward gender inclusivity, a closer look at the electoral landscape suggested otherwise.
In 21 of Delhi’s seventy seats, which is thirty percent of the total, there was not a single woman candidate, neither party affiliated nor independent.
The numbers this election
The 2025 Delhi Assembly election, despite being fought largely on issues concerning women: ranging from safety to economic welfare, had strikingly poor women’s representation. Only 5 of Delhi’s seventy seats were won by women - a mere 7.14 percent representation in the assembly. It gave us a sharp realist lens on the ineffectiveness of campaign narratives on women’s empowerment and representation.
Among the five elected women in Delhi, four belong to the BJP: Rekha Gupta (Shalimar Bagh), Poonam Sharma (Wazirpur), Neelam Pahalwan (Najafgarh), and Shikha Roy (Greater Kailash). The sole woman legislator from the Aam Aadmi Party (‘AAP’) is Atishi, the former Chief Minister, who contested and won from the Kalkaji constituency.
The false promise of representation
Throughout the Delhi elections, all the major political parties aggressively tussled over wooing women voters. AAP, BJP, and the Congress all promised cash-transfer schemes targeted specifically at women.
AAP pledged Rs 2,100 per month for women in Delhi, while both BJP and Congress went a step further, offering Rs 2,500 per month if voted to power. This trend of competitive populism underscores the mistreatment of women within an electorate merely as a voting demographic, and not as stakeholders in electoral contests.
