Congress General Secretary, Priyanka Gandhi announced on October 19 that 40% of candidates that the Party would field in the UP Assembly elections would be women. Most of these women, Priyanka said are on social media and would be able to spread their message to voters. The announcement has two objectives. First it is intended to woo women voters in a state where the Congress has a weak organization on the ground and where it failed to make a mark in the last three decades. Whether Priyanka’s gambit pays off is a different matter but she has the courage of conviction to challenge the male bastion in a state where patriarchy has dominated its politics and society and where crime against women has risen by leaps and bounds. Priyanka will lose nothing even if the women candidates don’t win but the Party would have proven to the world that it believes in women’s political empowerment. The Congress campaign poster which reads, “Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon” (I am a woman; I can fight) was released after the announcement. Of the 14.4 crore eligible voters in Uttar Pradesh, 6.6 crore are women. This means that out of the 403 assembly seats scheduled for elections early next year, the Congress will give about 160 tickets to women candidates if it goes to the polls alone.
For far too long, women have been marginalized in the politics of this country. The Women’s Reservation Bill seeking to give 33% reservation for women in parliament and state assemblies moved by the government in 1996 has been hanging fire for too long with no political party willing to bite the bullet and vote for it. But for a while now the growing political mobilization of women has been reflected in turnout figures even if it has had very little influence on skewed political representation. In Uttar Pradesh, where women constitute nearly 46 percent of voters, the representation of women in the state legislature has improved from over 2 per cent in the 1990s to about 11 per cent in 2017. As expected, rival parties have criticized the Congress announcement with some calling it pure election drama, considering the Party could not muster enough support to vote for the Women’s Reservation Bill when it was in the driving seat at the Centre. Women had performed very well in the recent UP Panchayat polls, with about 53.7 % of successful candidates being women. Of the 75 district Panchayat presidents’ posts, 42 are occupied by women against their share of 24 posts as per the one-third reservation norm for women, while men hold only 33 seats. Priyanka’s gamble could be a game changer for the Congress Party in UP and in the country.