Women to head 50 pc local bodies in Kerala

 
The Kerala Election Commission has declared the names of 489 gram panchayats which will have women presidents after the elections.

The commission will soon publish the names of the 76 block panchayats, 30 municipalities, seven district panchayats and three corporations which are also being set apart for women candidates.

In all, women will head 605 of the 1,208 local bodies in the state out of which 121 have been reserved for Scheduled Castes and eight for Scheduled Tribes.

In the local bodies, which are not reserved for women, the vice-presidentship has been set apart for women. At present, there are around 7,000 women among the 20,000 representatives elected to local bodies.

The fact that women are suddenly going to call the shots at the local administration level in the state has sent jitters among many men though most of them do not express it
publicly.

Many of them see a flaw in the fact that the reservation did not disqualify women from contesting to the general seats. Another “side effect” that men fear is that many women representatives may be “remote-controlled” by men in the absence of competent candidates.