140 Independents, 24 women in the fray

SHILLONG, FEB 7: One hundred and forty Independent candidates have thrown in their hats for the upcoming February 23 Meghalaya assembly elections and as many as twenty-four female candidates are also in the fray out of the three hundred fifty-five candidates who have filed their nomination papers.

The Independents also has the highest number of female candidates as nine out of the one hundred and forty-five candidates are females followed by the Congress and the United Democratic Party (UDP) which has fielded five candidates each, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) two, HSPDP, BJP and KHNAM one each in the sixty-member Meghalaya assembly.

Some of the prominent Independent candidates like former Meghalaya Community & Rural Development (C&RD) Saleng C Sangma and Samuel Sangma are contesting as Independent candidates after being denied Congress ticket.

Even though most of the political parties make noises of more women participations in electoral politics, but when it comes to allocation of party tickets they are overlooked. The reasons given for overlooking them is the “winnability of the candidates” which many political parties say is the main criteria of allotting party tickets and also that few women candidates had applied for the ticket.

The Congress is the only party that has field more candidates than the sixty assembly seats. For the sixty seats, the party has fielded sixty-one candidates, but one of them will inevitably withdraw.

The UDP, which is the largest regional party, has fielded fifty-two candidates, the newly floated National People’s Party (NPP) led by former NCP leader PA Sangma –27, NCP– 21, HSPDP –18, BJP -13, Samajawdi Party –10. KHNAM and Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) have put up four each, 2 each by Meghalaya Democratic Party (MDP) and Garo National Council (GNC) and one by Communist Party of India (CPI).

Scrutiny of the nomination papers will be on Thursday, and the date of withdrawal of nominations is February 9.

Following is the list of candidates party and constituency wise:

	General Elections-2013 to the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly
	Party wise number of candidates who filed nomination papers upto the 6th February, 2013

Sl No	Name of Party	Party Abbreviation	Number of candidates who filed nomination papers
			Male	Female	Total
1	Bharatiya Janata Party	BJP	12	1	13
2	Communist Party of India	CPI	1	0	1
3	Garo National Council	GNC	2	0	2
4	Hill State People’s Democratic Party	HSPDP	17	1	18
5	Indian National Congress	INC	56	5	61
6	Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement	KHNAM	3	1	4
7	Lok Jan Shakti Party	LJP	4	0	4
8	Meghalaya Democratic Party	MDP	2	0	2
9	National People’s Party	NPP	27	0	27
10	Nationalist Congress Party	NCP	19	2	21
11	Samajwadi Party	SP	10	0	10
12	United Democratic Party	UDP	47	5	52
13	Independent	IND	131	9	140
TOTAL			331	24	355