Highest Victory Margin Among Women MLAs in Kerala

By: WE Staff | Tuesday, 5 May 2026

• 11 women elected to Kerala state legislative assembly
• Key victories include Usha Vijayan, Vidya Balakrishnan & Fathima Tahaliya
• Women’s representation remains under 10%, keeping 33% quota demand alive

Eleven females were elected to the Kerala state legislative assembly with 6 of them being first-time women elected to the legislature and 4 returning to a second term in the legislature. The most experienced of them is Geetha Gopi of CPI who was elected to the third term in Nattika. All eleven were also won by a comfortable margin. Uma Thomas of Congress had the greatest victory margin of women MLAs, with a victory of 50,211 votes.

K A Thulasi of the Congress was elected to the Kongad seat by the slenderest margin of 3,706 votes. Two of the victories bore a symbolic burden, both were against sitting male ministers. Usha Vijayan defeated O R Kelu and Vidya Balakrishnan defeated A K Saseendran by more than 10,000 votes each.

Another interesting scalp was by Fathima Tahaliya of IUML who defeated LDF convenor T.P. Ramakrishnan in Perambra. K.A. Thulasi and Shanimol Usman were the only two that had female opponents; the rest of the nine emerged as winners against male challengers.

At party level, women candidates continue to make up a minority across the main alliances in the Kerala Assembly election in 2026. The LDF has had approximately 18 women candidates out of 140 seats with 12 of them being CPM, five CPI, and one KCM.

UDF had nominated approximately 12 women candidates with the Congress giving 92 women candidates a total of nine women tickets. Two female candidates have been in the field of IUML and one in RMPI.

The NDA also has had approximately 18 women candidates with some of the contests being in seats that were described in source data as difficult to win.

According to the historical record, the percentage of women representation in the Kerala Assembly has hardly surpassed 10 per cent since the year 1957. In the present Assembly, which is outgoing, it was about 8 per cent. The figures of Lok Sabha representation by the parties in recent elections also display low numbers including the cases whereby only a small percentage of tickets went to women.

The groups of the civil society are still demanding 33 per cent of the women reservation arguing that representation has always been in an episodic and not systematic form.