Sounding the poll bugle in the election bound Uttar Pradesh, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra announced in Lucknow that the party will give 40% of the total tickets for the Assembly election to women candidates.
The party has sought applications for interested women candidates from each of the 403 Assembly constituencies for which they can apply till 15 November. The election in the state is scheduled for February-March 2022. As per the 2011 census, of the about 20 crore total population of the state, 9.5 crore are women. It is this massive vote bank, that have traditionally voted as per the direction given by the man of their house, that the Congress party is targeting in order to revive the party’s fortune in the state where it has been reduced to the proverbial 12th man in the political arena of the state which sends 80 Lok Sabha MPs.
The Congress presently has one Lok Sabha MP (Sonia Gandhi, Rai Bareli) and 7 MLAs in the state with 6.25% vote share that it got in the 2017 assembly elections. While Priyanka Gandhi Vadra stated that the party will decide on the CM face later, it was evident from her statements made in the press conference at Nehru Bhawan, Lucknow, where the Congress office is situated, that she was going to the CM face, an announcement of which is expected by year end.
While responding to media queries, she said that “in the last years, 18,000 Congress workers have gone to prison and that the Congress was the only party that is fighting on the ground against the BJP”. The 49-year-old Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was appointed as the general secretary of the state in January 2019.
According to her, the 40% women candidates will be selected on the basis of “merit” rather than “caste” considerations, while adding that there was nothing wrong if the party gives tickets to women candidates who come from a politically exposed family. “If it was up-to me, I would have reserved 50% of the ticket for women. Whether this system of reservation will be followed by Congress in other states that are going to poll, is something that will be decided by the respective local leaders,” Vadra said.
She added that she was yet to decide on whether she was going to contest the elections or not. However, the likelihood of her contesting from one of the “traditional” or “high impact seat” was very strong in order to galvanize the party worker and break the image that she is a “tourist politician”, a charge that she faces from the opposition party members.
The “historical announcement”, as it was repeatedly declared by party national spokeswoman Supriya Shinte, who was on the stage with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra a, immediately elicited a reaction from BSP Chief Mayawati who has been accused of being the “B team” of the ruling BJP. Mayawati, in her tweets, questioned the intent of the Congress’s announcement asking if the Congress was so concerned about women empowerment then why it did not pass a law mandating 33% reservation for women in assemblies and parliament when it was in power.
In March 2010, when the Congress led UPA had passed the women’s reservation bill in the Rajya Sabha, Mayawati led BSP members did not participate in the voting and walked out of the hall before the voting. The bill is still pending as it was never sent to the Lok Sabha.