ROHTAK: At a time when the ongoing municipal corporation election campaign here is projecting a strong woman candidate like Jagmati Sangwan for the mayor's post, the percentage of women contesting municipal polls has witnessed a dip as compared to the last MC polls. In 2013 MC polls, there were 115 women candidates in the poll fray for contesting 21 wards while this time the number had been reduced to a mere 75.For the mayor post, as it would be directly elected for the first time, there are only two women candidates in the poll fray. Jagmati is a candidate of the Communist Party of Marxist while Anshu, another candidate, is also contesting the poll against 12 male mayor candidates. In the last MC polls, 10 of the women candidates remained successful and one of them, Renu Dabla, who had the support of the Congress, was made mayor for five years. The ruling BJP, which is contesting the MC poll on the party symbol, has given ticket to eight women candidates in 22 wards. The Congress is not contesting the elections on party symbol. Barring the mayor post, the INLD is also not contesting on party symbol. In all, 142 candidates had filed the candidature forms, of which seven withdrew on the last day on December 7, of which four were women - Asha from ward no. 1, Vanshika from ward 13, Meenu from ward 16 and Jyoti from ward 19. According to the MC data, of the 20 wards, seven were reserved for women in 2013 and seeing their active participation, one more extra ward has been reserved for them in 2018.

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