More than 50 per cent of 23,576 wards going to polls are reserved for women.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Thiruvananthapuram: As Ajanya S Aji hailing form Malayankeezhu on the suburbs of Thiruvananthapuram turned 21 on November 6, the local CPI(M) workers heaved a sigh of relief as she attained the minimum age for contesting the local body election before the date for filing nominations for the elections.
Ajanya, who is activist of the Students Federation of India (SFI) and a third-year degree student, is the Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate at Thachottukavu ward in Malayankeezhu panchayat.
If women in politics often lament over being sidelined in electoral politics, Kerala is now witnessing political parties wooing women to become candidates as more than 50 per cent of the 23,576 wards going to the polls are reserved for women.
As many as 13,000 wards are reserved for women. It includes over 12,035 general wards, 1,022 reserved for scheduled caste women and 142 reserved for scheduled tribe women. Around 600 chairperson posts of local bodies are also reserved for women.
Political parties were learnt to be running helter-skelter in many of the 13,000 odd women reservation wards to find suitable women candidates.
Volunteers of the Haritha Karma Sena (HKS) who are involved in door-to- door garbage collection, retired teachers and other government employees are among those being wooed by political parties. The problem is more acute in backward regions where finding a suitable women candidate is a tedious task for the political parties.
According to an official of the Haritha Keralam Mission that manages the HKS volunteers, who are around 35,000 in numbers across the state, in the 2020 election also some HKS volunteers contested in the election and some of them even won. This year also some HKS volunteers were learnt to be planning to contest. A clear picture will be known only when the nominations are filed.
Over the last few years HKS volunteers are more active in door-to-door garbage collection and hence they are very familiar in their localities now. Hence they are becoming much sought after for becoming candidates. But the HKS volunteers are now earning a decent income, around Rs 14,000 average per month. There are very proactive members who earn up to Rs 25,000. Hence they may think twice before venturing into local body elections, said the official.
Back seat driving is also quite common in wards reserved for women with former male members of a ward fielding their wife once the ward is reserved for women.