At least three women reach the reconstituted 90-member J&K Assembly

At least three women have made it to the restructured 90-member Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly, whose outcomes were announced on Tuesday.

The three include Shagun Parihar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sakeena Masood and Shamim Firdous of the National Conference (NC).

Former minister Sakeena Masood won a DH Pora assembly seat in Kulgam district. She obtained an amazing winning margin of 17,449 votes over her closest opponent, Gulzar Ahmed Dar of the Peoples Democratic Party, polling 36,613 votes overall.

Masood remained a minister in the NC cabinet and had before twice won the Noorabad seat in 1996 and 2008.

Shagun Parihar of the BJP, 29, daughter of Ajit Parihar and niece of Anil Parihar, who were slain by terrorists in Kishtwar on November 1, 2018, won the Kishtwar assembly seat.

Against her closest challenger SA Kichloo of the National Conference, who obtained 28,532 votes, the candidate collected 29,053 votes. Shagun almost passed former NC minister Kichloo by a margin of 521 votes. Kichloo had just secured the seat in 2002 and 2008.

Habbakadal seat went to Shamim Firdous of the National Conference. Her margin of victory against BJP candidate Ashok Kumar Bhat was 9,538 votes. Against Bhat’s 28,99 votes, she earned 12,437 votes.

The NC leader has formerly held the Habbakadal seat in 2008 and 2014.

Still, the three wins account for just 3.33% of the equitable gender representation in the 90-member assembly.

Rising from 24 women in the 2014 campaign, there were 41 women candidates overall in the running. In 2008, the figure was even higher—67.