Though Goa has more women voters (5.63 lakh) than men (5.45 lakh), the number of women candidates in the forthcoming Assembly polls is woefully low. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leads the list with five of its 40 candidates being women, the Congress follows with three and the BJP and the MGP with one each. In addition to these 10, there are six Independent candidates, resulting in a total of 16 women out of the 250 in the fray. The outgoing House has two women MLAs — Alina Saldanha of the BJP and Zenifer Monsserrate of the the Congress. “This has nothing to do with indifference to women by the party, because our party has women working at different levels of the organisation . It is just that the party has to choose candidates who can win polls,” said Kunda Chodankar, former president of the Morcha.
