From cash transfers to maternity leaves: How parties wooed 71 lakh women voters for today’s Delhi elections

Delhi Elections: As Delhi votes today, political parties are vying for the support of women voters with promises of financial aid, transportation benefits, and maternity leave. 

Gulam Jeelani
Updated5 Feb 2025, 08:26 AM IST
From cash transfers to maternity leaves: How parties are fighting for women votes in Delhi Election 2025
From cash transfers to maternity leaves: How parties are fighting for women votes in Delhi Election 2025(Snehal Sontakke )

Delhi Elections: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has promised 2,100 a month for women of Delhi. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party has been in power in the national capital for a decade.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress–the national capital's two opposition parties–have promised an even larger amount of   2,500 a month for women if they are voted to power in the upcoming Delhi Election 2025.

Also Read | Delhi Polls: BJP promises ₹15K aid for competitive exams, free education till PG

Not just cash transfer schemes, the three political parties have promised free bus rides, pension schemes, and maternity leaves, among other doles, to woo the women voters of Delhi voting today.

Of the 1.5 crore eligible voters, 71.7 lakh are women in the national capital.

The cash and the incentives

The AAP, Delhi’s ruling party, was the first to announce a cash transfer scheme for women in Delhi. In March 2024, the party announced it would give   1,000 a month to women in Delhi. The Delhi government even allocated 76,000 crore for the scheme in the 2024-25 budget. However, the scheme could not be rolled out.

Many months later, close to Delhi Election 2025, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal said the party would increase the monthly aid to 2,100 if it came to power following the upcoming elections.

The Congress followed suit. The party, once a powerhouse in the national capital, promised a monthly financial aid of 2,500 to women under the proposed ‘Pyaari Didi Yojana.’ 

The BJP, usually critical of freebies offered by AAP, also announced 2,500 a month for women if it comes to power in Delhi.

The BJP has not been in power in the national capital for 27 years. The saffron party has also promised to provide pregnant women with six nutritional kits and financial assistance of 21,000. It has also announced an increase in pension for widows from 2,500 to 3,000. The BJP also promised to pay maternity leave for domestic workers.

Also Read | Delhi Election 2025: Arvind Kejriwal says he could not fulfil THESE promises

The cash scheme promise is similar to schemes such as the ‘Ladli Behna Yojana’ (Madhya Pradesh) and the ‘Ladki Bahin Yojana’ (Maharashtra), which are already in place in these BJP-ruled states. The party is said to be reaping political dividends from these women-centric schemes in the two states where it has been in power.

Earlier this month, the Election Commission of India (ECI) said it had received an ‘unprecedented’ number of applications for new voter registrations in the national capital. The newly-added women voters have outnumbered men ahead of Delhi Election 2025, the poll panel said.

In a statement, the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said more than three lakh new voters have been added to the voter list in the special summary revision process. Among the new voters, women (96,426) outnumbered men (70,873).

After the AAP announced its financial aid to women, for which being a registered voter in Delhi is an important eligibility criterion, the poll panel said it received an unprecedented number of new voter registrations in the capital. The poll panel added that newly added women voters outnumbered new male voters.

An additional 5.1 lakh 'Form-6' have been received between December 16, 2024, and January 6 for registration of new voters, the poll panel said. Form 6 is an application for the inclusion of names in the voter lists.

More Women Support AAP

Studies have suggested that the support of women voters helped the AAP script a landslide in the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections. A Lokniti-CSDS poll-eve survey found that women were 11 percentage points more likely to vote for the AAP than men.

More women are also increasingly coming out to cast their votes in the national capital. In the 2015 assembly elections, for example, the difference between male and female turnout was 1.14, which reduced to 0.14 in the 2020 assembly polls.

Low Women Representation

Parties have promised a lot for women, but representation of women in the candidate list remains low.

Of the 699 candidates in the fray in today's Delhi Assembly elections, 96 are women, as parties jockey to woo women voters to win the polls. In the 2020 Assembly polls, 76 of the 672 candidates were women.

Also Read | Arvind Kejriwal’s new poll promise: Free electricity, water for TENANTS in Delhi

Among three key political parties in the elections, the BJP and AAP have fielded nine female candidates each, whereas the Congress has seven women nominees. All three parties have fielded more women candidates this time than the 2020 Assembly polls.

The prominent women candidates from the AAP include Chief Minister Atishi, Pooja Balyan, Pramila Tokas, Rakhi Bidlani, Dhanwanti Chandela, Bandana Kumar, and Sarita Singh.

Among the BJP's women nominees, the prominent are Rekha Gupta, Poonam Sharma, Shikha Rai, and Priyanka Gautam. 

Of the Congress' seven female candidates, the key nominees include Alka Lamba, Ariba Khan, Ragini Nayak, and Aruna Kumari.

The Delhi Election 2025 will be held on February 5, and the results will be declared on February 8.

Past Promises

This is not the first time that parties have made promises to woo women voters in Delhi. In the 2020 Assembly election, AAP promised free bus rides to women. The scheme reduced transport costs for nearly 75 per cent of beneficiaries, according to a Greenpeace report.

The BJP, too, had promised to launch several women-focused policies and schemes in the past elections. The party assured a total assistance of 2 lakh to the first two girls born into economically weak families till they turn 21. The party also promised to increase the pensions for 1984 anti-Sikh riots widows from 2,500 to 3,500 a month.

The Congress party promised to provide free education in public institutions to girls from nursery to PhD and assured free annual health checkups for all women in earlier elections in Delhi. The party also assured that it would restore the ‘Ladli’ scheme, which had incentivised institutional births, as well as primary and secondary education among women.

The cash scheme promise is similar to the schemes that are already in place in BJP-ruled states, such as ‘Ladli Behna Yojana’ in Madhya Pradesh.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by Arvind Kejriwal, comfortably won assembly elections in 2015 and 2020. Before that, the Congress was in power from 1998 until 2013.

The BJP was left with single-digit seats in the Delhi Assembly in the last two elections. The Congress was completely wiped out after ruling Delhi for 15 years until 2013.

Key Takeaways
  • Increased representation of women candidates in 2025 elections compared to 2020.
  • Political parties are focusing heavily on financial aid and benefits to attract women voters.
  • Women voters have shown increasing turnout and support for the AAP in previous elections.

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Business NewsElectionsFrom cash transfers to maternity leaves: How parties wooed 71 lakh women voters for today’s Delhi elections
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First Published:22 Jan 2025, 11:35 AM IST

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