At 5, Delhi Sees Fewest Women MLAs In A Decade

Delhi: Nearly 100 women candidates fought the Delhi Assembly polls this year, but only five – four from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and one from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – could emerge as winners, the lowest in the last 10 years.

Outgoing Chief Minister Atishi, the only woman candidate of the AAP who won this time, was among those five newly-elected women MLAs, who now constitute seven per cent of the 70-member assembly.

Of the 699 candidates this year, 96 were women, including nine each from the BJP and the AAP, and seven from the Congress. The three key political parties fielded more women candidates this time than in the 2020 Assembly polls.

This year, it was also the first time since the Delhi legislative assembly was reconstituted in 1993 that a higher turnout of women voters — 60.9% against 60.2% of men exercising their franchise – was registered. About 44.08 lakh of 72.36 lakh registered women voters got their fingers inked in the single-phase election on February 5.

Women Who Won 2025 Delhi Polls

Atishi: She retained her Kalkaji seat and won the election by a margin of 3,521 votes, defeating BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri. Atishi is among a few AAP ministers and senior leaders who won the elections as most of the party’s big guns, including Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Saurabh Bharadwaj, and Satyendar Jain, lost.

Neelam Pahelwan: The BJP nominee from Najafgarh defeated her nearest rival, AAP’s Tarun Kumar, by nearly 30,000 votes.

Rekha Gupta: Fielded by the BJP from the Shalimar Bagh seat, she defeated AAP’s Bandana Kumari by 29,595 votes.

Poonam Sharma: The BJP candidate won the Wazirpur constituency, defeating Rajesh Gupta of the AAP by 11,425 votes.

Shikha Roy: The BJP leader emerged victorious by defeating incumbent health minister Saurabh Bharadwaj by a margin of 3,188 votes from Greater Kailash.