17th Lok Sabha: Record number of female MPs elected

A record number of women are set to enter India's parliament after a marathon election that returned Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power, initial results showed yesterday.

With most of the counting complete, 78 of the 542 seats of Lok Sabha went into polls were on course to go to women candidates - a record high in the world's largest democracy, but still well below the global average of nearly one in four seats.

Election Commission of India has suspended vote in Vallore constituency.

India was one of the first countries to have a female leader, but more than five decades after Indira Gandhi became prime minister, women's participation in politics remains stubbornly low.

Almost half of India's 900 million voters are women, and both Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress Party appealed heavily to female voters in their election campaigns. Both promised a safer life and new opportunities to women, who still earn less, learn less, live poorer, marry younger and risk sexual violence from molestation to rape.

Female voter turnout has historically been low, but this year for the first time women turned out in roughly the same numbers as men at about 67%.

The proportion of women in the lower house now looks set to rise to 14% - two percentage points higher than before the election, but still well behind neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Among the biggest upsets in the election was scored by Smriti Irani, a BJP candidate who defeated Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Amethi - a bastion of the Gandhi family for decades.