India elects a record 78 women to 17th Lok Sabha: Here's who they are

The 17th Lok Sabha will see the highest ever number of women in Parliament, 78 women have been elected from across the country. There is certainly more room for improvement, with the current proportion of women being just 14.36% in Parliament. This at a time when 48% of India’s population is female, according to the last Census. The single largest party at the Centre, the BJP, has also sent the most women to Parliament. Out of the 303 seats the party secured, 41 are women.

Across the country, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal sent the maximum number of women to the Lok Sabha, with 11 women being elected from each state. Uttar Pradesh has eight women MPs from the BJP, and one each from the Congress, BSP and Apna Dal (Soneylal). Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress gave 40% representation to women in the candidate list and therefore nine women from AITC have been elected to the Parliament. Two BJP women candidates were also elected from the state.

The South fared poorly when it came to electing women, with Kerala electing just one woman. Remya Haridas, who was elected from Alathur, unseated the MP in power and went on to become the second-ever Dalit woman MP from Kerala. She was one of 54 women candidates fielded by the Congress across the country. Kerala elected only one MP in 2014 and has continued the trend.

Tamil Nadu elected three women — Kanimozhi and Thamizhachi Thangapandian from the DMK and Jothimani from the Congress. Kanimozhi, who was a Rajya Sabha MP, won from Thoothukudi, and Thamizhachi was elected from Chennai South. The DMK only fielded 2 women candidates out of a total of 20, and both candidates won. Jothimani, on the other hand, won against five-time AIADMK MP M Thambidurai and won. Tamil Nadu had 64 women candidates in total. Overall, Tamil Nadu sent four women MPs to Parliament in 2014 and is down to three now.

BJP candidate Shobha Karandlaje and independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh won with large margins and increased the tally of women from Karnataka in the Lok Sabha by one — from one MP to two. Women’s representation is cutting a sorry figure in Karnataka this Lok Sabha election, with a total of only 27 women contesting from 28 seats in the state. This was up from 20 women who were fielded in 2014, out of whom only Shobha Karandlaje won.

The YSR Congress Party, which swept both the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls and won 22 out of 25 seats in the state has four women MPs. The party fielded four candidates, and all four of them have made it to the Parliament. Three of these women contested for the first time, and the fourth, Vanga Geetha, has been a Rajya Sabha MP. By fielding four women, 16% of the candidates fielded by the YSRCP had been women. There were five women MPs from pre-bifurcation Andhra in 2009, and three in 2014.  

For the second time, Telangana has just one woman MP — the previous tenure was held by Kavitha Kalvakuntla, and this time, it’s been held by her namesake Kavitha Maloth, also from the TRS. India’s youngest state has been called out for not having adequate representation of women and this continued in this Lok Sabha poll too. Out of a total of 443 candidates, just 21 were women, and just six women were fielded from the Congress, BJP and TRS.

Here's the full list:

Andhra Pradesh

1. Chinta Anuradha — Amalapuram — YSRCP
2. KV Satyavathi — Anakapalli — YSRCP
3. Goddeti Madhavi — Araku Bapatla — YSRCP
4. Vanga Geethaviswanath — Kakinada — YSRCP

Assam

1. Queen Oja — Gauhati — BJP

Bihar

1. Rama Devi — Sheohar — BJP
2. Kavita Singh — Siwan — JD(U)
3. Veena Devi — Vaishali — LJP

Chandigarh

1. Kirron Kher — Chandigarh—BJP

Chattisgarh

1. Jyotsna Charandas Mahant — Korba — Congress
2. Renuka Singh Saruta — Sarguja — BJP
3. Gomati Sai — Raigarh —BJP

Delhi

1. Meenakshi Lekhi — New Delhi —BJP

Gujarat

1. Darshana Jardosh — Surat — BJP
2. Dr. Bharati Dhirubhai Shyal — Bhavnagar — BJP
3. Rathva Gitaben Vajesingbhai — Chhota Udaipur — BJP
4. Shardaben Patel — Mahesana — BJP
5. Poonamben Hemantbhai — Jamnagar — BJP
6. Ranjanben Dhananjay Bhatt — Vadodara — BJP

Haryana

1. Sunita Duggal — Sirsa — BJP

Jharkhand

1. Annpurna Devi — Kodarma — BJP
2. Gita Kora — Singhbhum — Congress

Karnataka

1. Shobha Karandlaje — Udupi Chikmaglur — BJP
2. Sumalatha Ambareesh — Mandya — Independent

Kerala

1. Remya Haridas— Alathur — Congress

Madhya Pradesh

1. Himadri Singh — Shahdol — BJP
2. Pragya Singh Thakur — Bhopal — BJP
3. Riti Pathak — Sidhi — BJP
4. Sandhya Rai — Bhind — BJP

Maharashtra

1. Poonam Mahajan — Mumbai North Central — BJP
2. Bharati Pawar — Dindori — BJP
3. Raksha Khadse —Raver — BJP
4. Navneet Rana — Amravati — Independent
5. Supriya Sule — Baramati — NCP
6. Bhawana Gawali — Yavatmal-Washim — Shiv Sena
7. Pritam Gopinathrao Munde — Beed — BJP
8. Heena Vijaykumar —  Nandurbar — BJP

Meghalaya

1. Agatha Sangma Tura — Meghalaya — NPP

Odisha

1. Pramila Bisoyi — Aska — BJD
2. Chandrani Murmu —Keonjhar — BJD
3. Manjulata Mandal —Bhadrak — BJD
4. Sarmistha Sethi — Jajpur — BJD
5. Rajashree Mallick — Jagatsinghpur — BJD
6. Sangeeta Kumari — Bolangir — BJP
7. Aparajita Sarangi — Bhubaneswar — BJP

Punjab

1. Harsimrat Kaur Badal —Bathinda — Akali Dal
2. Preneet Kaur — Patiala — Congress

Rajasthan

1. Diya Kumari — Rajsamand — BJP
2. Ranjeeta Koli — Bharatpur — BJP
3. Jaskaur Meena — Dausa —BJP

Tamil Nadu

1. Jothimani S — Karur— Congress
2. Kanimozhi — Thoothukudi — DMK
3. Thamizhachi Thangapandian — Chennai South —DMK

Telangana

1. Kavitha Malothu —Mahabubabad —TRS

Tripura

1. Pratima Bhoumik — Tripura West — BJP

Uttar Pradesh

1. Anupriya Singh Patel —Mirzapur — Apna Dal (Soneylal)
2. Rita Bahuguna Joshi —Allahabad — BJP
3. Smriti Irani —Amethi — BJP
4. Dr. Sanghmitra Maurya — Badaun — BJP
5. Hema Malini — Mathura — BJP
6. Keshari Devi Patel — Phulpur — BJP
7. Niranjan Jyoti — Fatehpur — BJP
8. Rekha Verma — Dhaurahra — BJP
9. Maneka Gandhi — Sultanpur — BJP
10. Sangeeta Azad — Lalganj — BSP
11. Sonia Gandhi — Rae Bareli —Congress

Uttarakhand

1. Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah — Tehri Garhwal — BJP

West Bengal

1. Aparupa Poddar — Arambagh — All India Trinamool Congress
2. Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar —Barasat — All India Trinamool Congress
3. Nusrat Jahan Ruhi — Barsirhat — All India Trinamool Congress
4. Satabdi Roy — Birbhum — All India Trinamool Congress
5. Mimi Chakraborty — Jadavpur — All India Trinamool Congress
6. Mala Roy — Kolkata Dakshin — All India Trinamool Congress
7. Mahua Moitra — Krishnanagar — All India Trinamool Congress
8. Sajda Ahmed — Uluberia — All India Trinamool Congress
9. Pratima Mondal — Joynagar — All India Trinamool Congress
10. Debasree Chaudhuri —Raiganj — BJP
11. Locket Chatterjee — Hooghly — BJP