2 women to represent Delhi in 18th LS
Anshita Mehra
New Delhi, June 4
The 18th Lok Sabha will have two women MPs from the Capital as two of the seven candidates elected on the BJP ticket are women. This has happened after a gap of 26 years. So far, only nine female MPs have served the Capital.
In West Delhi, Kamaljeet Sehrawat of the BJP defeated AAP’s Mahabal Mishra to become the first female MP to represent the constituency. BJP’s Bansuri Swaraj defeated AAP’s Somnath Bharti in the New Delhi constituency.
In 1998, BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, mother of Bansuri Swaraj, and Meira Kumar of the Congress had won from South Delhi and Karol Bagh Lok Sabha constituencies, respectively.
Contesting the LS elections for the first time, Sehrawat and Bansuri were the only two female candidates nominated by major parties in Delhi.
The New Delhi constituency was earlier served by three female MPs. Sucheta Kriplani, who originally contested from this constituency in 1952 as a Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party candidate, became the first female MP in the Capital. She won again in 1957, although on the Congress ticket.
Meenakshi Lekhi was elected MP for this district in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019 as BJP candidate, while Congress’ Mukul Banerji won this seat in 1971. Bansuri is the fourth female MP to represent New Delhi.
Sehrawat is the first female MP to represent West Delhi since the seat was created in 2008. Mishra had served as West Delhi’s first MP in 2009.
Erstwhile Karol Bagh constituency, a reserved seat for Scheduled Castes, was the only seat represented by a woman candidate four times since 1971 — Sunderwati Nawal Prabhakar, Meira Kumar, Anita Arya and Krishna Tirath.
Sushma served as the MP for South Delhi in 1996 and 1998. She is the seat’s lone female MP. Similarly, Subhadra Joshi and Krishna Tirath, both Congress candidates, were the only female MPs representing Chandni Chowk and North West Delhi, respectively, to this day.
Bansuri continued her mother Sushma Swaraj’s legacy who was the first female Chief Minister of Delhi, the first and only female MP from South Delhi, and only the second person after Jawaharlal Nehru to serve as the Minister of External Affairs for full five years.
The BJP nominated Bansuri to succeed former MP and Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi. In 2023, Bansuri was named co-convener of the BJP’s Delhi legal cell. Her mother’s goodwill and the Modi factor were two things that contributed to her victory over AAP’s Bharti.
Despite being a seasoned politician in the Capital, Bharti was unable to defeat a fresh face. In 2013, Bharti won from the Malviya Nagar Assembly constituency in the Delhi Assembly poll.
