The 18th Lok Sabha’s inaugural session, between June 24 and July 3, will see newly-elected members of Parliament taking oath, some for the first time.
Also Read: 18th lok sabha session updates
Among these are 74 women MPs, a decrease from the 78 MPs in the previous Lok Sabha, the highest ever recorded. West Bengal leads as the State electing the most women MPs, at 11. At 38%, Trinamool Congress is the party with the greatest proportion of women among its Lok Sabha MPs.
In 1957, there were just 45 women candidates contesting the Lok Sabha election; in 2024 there were 799 — 9.5% of the total candidates in the fray. Of this 74 were elected, representing 13.6% of the MPs in the 543-seat House.
As many as 150 Lok Sabha constituencies had no women candidates. Some States saw no women candidates at all — such as Manipur and Nagaland (which have two and one Lok Sabha seats respectively).
We break down the winners by State and constituency, and paint a picture of the women MPs of the 18th Lok Sabha.
Twenty seven years after the women’s reservation bill was first introduced in Parliament, the 17th Lok Sabha on September 20, 2023 passed a Bill with near unanimity to amend the Constitution and provide one-third reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. The Bill was passed in a special session but its implementation is linked to a delimitation exercise that is frozen till 2026.
Isolated women candidates and winners
For 74 women MPs to be elected, there needs to be a substantial number of women participating in the election rounds.
When we look at where women candidates participated from, we find that, visually, even though several constituencies had at least a woman candidate participating, the map looked very different when we increase the metric to constituencies with at least two women candidates.
