By PTI
LUCKNOW: The Congress will give 40 per cents of its tickets to women candidates in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, party’s general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said on Tuesday.
Gandhi told a news conference here that the decision is aimed at making women, roughly constituting half the voters, a “full-fledged partner in power”.
While announcing the party’s decision, Gandhi, also the party’s Uttar Pradesh affairs in-charge, however, remained non-committal on contesting the UP polls herself.
The Congress’ decision to field 40 per cent of woman candidates in UP, however, did not go down well with its opponents BJP and BSP both terming the move a “pure election drama”.
Tasked with regaining the party’s lost ground in the politically crucial state, Priyanka Gandhi, said, “It’s the party promise to give 40 per cent tickets to women in the coming elections.”
“Had I had my way, I would have given 50 per cent tickets to them,” she said, adding the decision to field more and more candidates would be taken forward in the 2024 polls “There is no hidden meaning to it. We want women in politics to become full-fledged partners in power,” she said.
Gandhi’s announcement was greeted with the bursting of firecrackers and slogan-shouting by women workers who were watching the press conference on a large screen elsewhere in the party office.
Congress had won only seven seats, including two by women, in the 403-member UP house in 2017 polls.
Asked if she will also contest the assembly elections, Priyanka Gandhi said, “It has not yet been decided. There is still some time for the elections. I will think about it and decide if I have to contest.”
Active in the state politics for over two years now, Gandhi evaded a definite reply on whether a woman would be projected as the CM face in the state after today’s announcement.
“I will tell this later when I want,” she said.
Elaborating on why the decision to field more woman candidates in the UP polls was taken, she said it is aimed at empowering every woman who wants justice, change and unity and her state to progress.
“Women will have to come forward if the country has to be taken forward,” she said while asking the prospective women candidates to apply for tickets by November 15.
To a question, Priyanka said that the participation of women in the party will improve with this decision.
“This decision has been taken with the approval of all. The main thinking is that women are being divided into castes and religion and they are failing to emerge as a force,” she said.
Referring to the Ujjwala scheme, she also took a dig at the BJP government, saying “political parties think they can please women only by giving gas cylinders and Rs 2,000”.
She did not find any fault in the prospect of fielding women from various political leaders’ families in elections as a fallout of this decision.
She said the decision was taken in UP where she is looking after the party affairs and it can prove to be an example for other states where the Congress has its government and elections are due soon.
When asked if this formula could be repeated in the party organisation, she said efforts will be made for it.
Soon after the announcement, BSP president Mayawati tweeted, “The Congress never remember Dalits, backwards and women when they are in power and having good days.”
“But now that their bad days are not going away, they have remembered Dalits in Punjab and women in UP. The decision to give 40 per cent of its tickets to women is nothing other than a pure election drama,” she said.
Rita Joshi, the former UPCC president who quit the Congress to join the BJP, alleged “Congress could not keep women like me, who contributed so much to the party, with them.”
“I gave 18 years to the party by doing selfless service, I was given responsibility and worked so hard for it, why was I humiliated?” she said, also citing the examples of Sushmita Dev and Priyanka Chaturvedi among others who left the Congress in recent past.
“They are giving tickets only where they know the party is going to lose and not where the party has chances to win. This is a drama as they know that they are going to lose in UP,” Joshi said.