
CHENNAI, OCT 7: Tamil Nadu will send a lone woman, the AIADMK’s Dr V Saroja, to the 13th Lok Sabha.
Saroja, who was the lone woman MP from Tamil nadu in 1998 too, was returned from Rasipuram where she defeated her PMK rival S Udayarasu by a margin of over 38,000 votes. In the 1998 polls, she had defeated the DMK’s K Kandasamy.
The other two women candidates, both nominated by the DMK, lost. Bavani Rajendran was defeated by former IAS officer and AIADMK candidate K Malaichamy in Ramanathapuram, while Geetha Jeevan (Tirunelveli) lost to the AIADMK’s former Assembly speaker P H Pandian.
The Tamil Maanila congress, which swore by 33 percent reservation for women in Parliament and the State Assemblies, did not field any woman this time despite contesting as many as 22 seats.
Besides the DMK and AIADMK nominees, seven women contested the polls as Independents, in comparison to 1998 when only five women contested.




