An elated Maneka Sardar after learning of her victory from Potka on Wednesday. (Bhola Prasad)

Ranchi, Dec. 23: Eight out of 81. That’s the ratio of women to men in the Jharkhand Assembly.

For the first time since Jharkhand came to existence nine years ago, women will occupy one tenth of the seats in the 81 member House. The number of women MLAs has increased over the years, but at a dismal pace. The first Assembly had three women representatives — Annapurna Devi from Koderma, Joba Majhi from Manoharpur and Maneka Sardar from Potka. The second Assembly elections in 2005 raised the tally to five with Forward Bloc’s Aparna Sengupta from Nirsa and BJP’s Kunti Devi from Jharia joining the original three who were re-elected.

However, the 2009 poll results created history of sorts with eight women trouncing their male counterparts to reach the state Assembly.

Among those who will lend colour in an otherwise male bastion is Geeta Koda, wife of jailed ex-chief minister Madhu Koda, who won Jagannathpur (reserved) seat by 25,740 votes, riding the crest of a sympathy wave. Incidentally, Geeta won the seat in her maiden appearance at the hustings by the biggest margin amongst all other women candidates.

However if Geeta’s feat attracted the maximum media attention, two others — Maneka Sardar and Kunti Devi of BJP and Annapurna Devi reached personal milestones by retaining their seats for the third time in a row. Sardar trounced her nearest Congress rival by a margin of 24,290 votes to retain the Potka seat. Kunti Devi retained her Jharia seat, whilst Annapurna Devi of RJD retained her Koderma seat by a margin of 17,283 votes.

Geeta apart, other first-timers also put up an impressive show. Sudha Choudhury of JD(U), who was in third spot in 2005, extracted sweet revenge from the Chhatarpur seat by pushing her 2005 rival Radha Krishna Kishore to the third spot .

Sita Soren, widow of Shibu Soren’s son Durga, won the Jama seat by 12,706 votes. Geeta Shree Soren, daughter of late Congress icon Kartik Oraon, trounced sitting BJP MLA Samir Oraon to win the Sisai seat on a Congress ticket. At Simdega, Vimla Pradhan of BJP defeated sitting Congress MLA Neil Tirkey.

However, two sitting women MLAs, Joba Majhi from Manoharpur and Aparna Sengputa from Nirsa, failed to retain their seats.