The 15th Maharashtra Assembly will only have 8 per cent women in the house revealed a report by PRS Legislative. The profile of 15th Maharashtra Assembly also highlighted that the assembly is getting older with MLAs elder than 70 years constituting 4 per cent of the house, the highest ever in Maharashtra’s history.
Amid plans of implementing the Women’s Reservation Bill to reserve one third of seats in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas for women, the proportion of women legislators in Maharashtra legislative assembly has decreased from last term. The newly elected house of 288 legislators consist of only 22 women MLAs, which constitutes only 8% of the assembly.
The profile of the incoming Maharashtra assembly by PRS Legislative said that Maharashtra had 24 women MLAs in the last term, which was the highest until now, but the number reduced by two in the new term.
The report also claimed that Maharashtra assembly is getting older with the increase in average age from 49 in 2009 to 54 in 2024. For the first time, 4% MLAs are above 70 years of age while 40% fall in the age group of 56 to 70 years. The number of young MLAs between the age of 25 to 40 years has also decreased as the new term will have only 8% of young MLAs against 14% in the last term.
Notably, the proportion of MLAs with education background of graduation and post graduation has increased over the years. In 2014, only 13% MLAs had post graduate degrees and 40% had graduation degrees, which has now increased to 17% and 42% respectively.
The profile also focused on the varied field of professions that the legislators come from. Around 86% of the MLAs have declared agriculture or business as their profession, while the remaining constitutes of politics, social work, medicine and law among others.
