House politics: Women Muslim politicians scarce
Source: New Indian Express
NEW DELHI: India’s Muslim women politicians have been chief ministers, constituency managers, party faithfuls, party hoppers, managers of important ministries– in short, capable of every quality shown by men to be go-getters and parliamentarians. Missing from the House (Juggernaut), a new book by journalists Rasheed Kidwai and Ambar Kumar Ghosh, however, has come up with a shocker.
Since the first general elections of 1951-52, there have been, until 2024, only 690 women MPs. Of this only 18 have been Muslim women. Out of the 18 Lok Sabhas constituted till 2025, there were five that did not have a single Muslim woman member.
“Equally shocking is the fact that the number of Muslim women elected to Parliament in one tenure, never crossed a mark of four in the 543-seat Lower House of Parliament,” they write in the book.
Speaking at the book launch organised by Juggernaut Books and the Prabha Khaitan Foundation at Delhi’s India Islamic Cultural Centre on Wednesday, Iqra Hasan, Samajwadi Party’s Kairana MP, spoke of “having to play by the rules set”, but underlined the “need for reservations within the party’s workforce” for an organic leadership to emerge so that there are enough women around to benefit from the 33 per cent reservation in Lok Sabha that the Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 promises.
Full article here.
NEW DELHI: India’s Muslim women politicians have been chief ministers, constituency managers, party faithfuls, party hoppers, managers of important ministries– in short, capable of every quality shown by men to be go-getters and parliamentarians. Missing from the House (Juggernaut), a new book by journalists Rasheed Kidwai and Ambar Kumar Ghosh, however, has come up with a shocker.
Since the first general elections of 1951-52, there have been, until 2024, only 690 women MPs. Of this only 18 have been Muslim women. Out of the 18 Lok Sabhas constituted till 2025, there were five that did not have a single Muslim woman member.
“Equally shocking is the fact that the number of Muslim women elected to Parliament in one tenure, never crossed a mark of four in the 543-seat Lower House of Parliament,” they write in the book.
Speaking at the book launch organised by Juggernaut Books and the Prabha Khaitan Foundation at Delhi’s India Islamic Cultural Centre on Wednesday, Iqra Hasan, Samajwadi Party’s Kairana MP, spoke of “having to play by the rules set”, but underlined the “need for reservations within the party’s workforce” for an organic leadership to emerge so that there are enough women around to benefit from the 33 per cent reservation in Lok Sabha that the Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 promises.
Full article here.