Only three women make it to 90-member Assembly
There were three women MLAs in the last Assembly which was dissolved in the 2018 elections and the number has remained unchanged this year too.
In 2014, NC’s Shamima Firdous and PDP’s Asiea Naqash were the only two women to get elected but PDP president Mehbooba Mufti joined them in the House after getting elected in the 2016 bypoll held after the death of her father and then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The Tribune looks at the profile and background of the three women legislators — two from Kashmir valley and one from Jammu region.
Sakeena Masood
The senior NC leader the face of the party in South Kashmir. She contested from Kulgam’s Damhal Hanjipora (DH Pora) seat and defeated PDP candidate Gulzar Ahmad Dar by a substantial margin of 17,449 votes. Daughter of late NC leader Wali Mohammed Itoo who was killed by militants in 1994, she has served several ministers, during the tenure of the government headed by Abdullahs. She became a legislator for the third time, this Assembly election. She is also the front runner in the probable ministers in the new government.
Shamima Firdous
She is the senior-most face of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party and won the election from Habba Kadal seat in Srinagar with a margin of 9538 votes by defeating the Bhartiya Janta party’s candidate Ashok Kumar Bhat. Shamima, who is party’s women wing president was elected as the MLA from the same seat twice earlier, and this time bagged 12,437 votes. Previously, Shamima has held the post of Chairperson of Jammu and Kashmir State Commission for Women.
Shagun Parihar
She won the seat on a BJP ticket from Kishtwar in Jammu region. After facing a tough competition from National Conference candidate and former minister Sajjad Ahmad Kichloo, Shagun won the seat with a margin of just 521 votes.
Parihar, whose father Ajit Parihar and brother Anil, then BJP state secretary, were killed by militants in 2018, bagged a total vote of 29,053 and joined politics only after the Bharatiya Janata Party announced her candidature ahead of the Assembly election in UT. At 29, she is the youngest MLA in J&K.
