42% of BJD MPs are women, highest ever for any party

The BJD’s contingent of 12 in the Lok Sabha will have five women, an unusually high share even for a House that has a record 78 women MPs. The Trinamool Congress, with nine women among 22 MPs, is not too far behind.

An analysis of strike rates — the percentage of seats contested that are won — shows that women had a higher strike rate than men in parties that have sent the most number of women to the 17th Lok Sabha.

Of the 54 women who contested on BJP tickets, 40 won, a strike rate of 74.1% compared with 68.8% for male candidates from the same party. Similarly, in the case of the Trinamool, the female strike rate of 52.9% was a little higher than that of the men. All the women fielded by YSRCP and DMK won. In contrast, Congress women candidates had the poorest strike rate (see graph).

As part of its extensive data research and analysis of election results, TOI had reported on Friday that 78 women had entered the Lok Sabha, the highest ever. Of them, 30 won by a margin of one lakh or more. Among the women MPs, Maneka Gandhi won in Sultanpur by the smallest margin, just over 14,500, while Ranjanben Bhatt in Vadodara had the highest margin of 5,89,177.

Hema Malini was the richest with assets worth over Rs 250 crore and YSRCP’s Goddeti Madhavi from Aruku had the least with declared assets of about Rs 1 lakh. The youngest woman MP was 25-year-old Chandrani Murmu, the BJD candidate from Keonjhar, and the oldest was 74-year-old Congress candidate Preneet Kaur from Patiala.