Mysuru:  Major political parties have continued to neglect women while giving tickets in Mysuru region for May 12 election to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly despite women constitute almost 50 percent of the registered voters.

In some constituencies, women outnumber male voters. Of the 23,69,987 registered voters in the district, as per the recent revision of the electoral rolls, there are 11,90,854 men and 11,79,133 women voters.

In three Assembly segments — Krishnaraja, Narasimharaja and T. Narsipur — women voters outnumber men. In Krishnaraja, there are 1,14,315 men as against 1,16,112 women voters while in T. Narsipur, the numbers are 95,693 and 96,163, respectively. In Narasimharaja, there are 1,20,468 men and 1,22,855 women voters.

Women aspirants have said that local and State units of political parties do not even consider fielding women candidates though the leadership at the top level favour giving adequate representation. There are 11 Assembly constituencies in Mysuru district and all the MLAs elected in 2013 polls were men. While allotting tickets, most political parties favour the “winnability” factor. In the recent past, Muktharunnisa Begum was elected as an MLA from N.R. Constituency, back in 1985, while Sunitha Veerappa Gowda was once elected from the now-dissolved Bannur constituency.

In the neighbouring Chamarajanagar district, Parimala Nagappa made it from Hanur segment riding on the sympathy wave after the death of her husband Nagappa when he was in Veerappan captivity. Years ago, K.S. Nagarathnamma was elected from Gundlupet constituency and Chandraprabha Urs from Hunsur. More recently, Geetha Mahadevaprasad from Gundlupet made it to the Assembly after the demise of her husband H.S. Mahadevaprasad.