UP Election 2022: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra officially joined the Congress in 2019
An actress jailed for protesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial citizenship law, the mother of a rape survivor, and a beauty pageant winner. These are the women who led the once dominant Congress party as it sought to reinvent itself in a controversial state election.
The series of female candidates in Uttar Pradesh is part of a new campaign led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. With the catchy tagline “I’m a girl and I can fight,” the campaign underscores the growing importance of female voters in the world’s largest democracy.
Ms. Vadra has pledged that 40% of the Congress party’s candidates for the 403-seat parliament will be women. She met that promise on the first list of candidates released by her party for state polls that will be conducted in seven phases starting February 10. Election results will be announced. announced on March 10.
“If you have suffered in the past, you must fight and gain power to fight for your rights,” Ms Vadra said in a video posted on Twitter last week. The congressional party’s list of candidates is a new kind of politics, she added.
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:# _रही_है_कांग्रेस# _हूँ_लड़__हूँ@priyankagandhi@dnettapic.twitter.com/KVV3I09Hlk– Uttar Pradesh Mahila Congress (@UttarPradeshPMC) January 15, 2022
India is no stranger to powerful female politicians. Vadra’s grandmother and former prime minister Indira Gandhi, have wielded considerable power in the country’s politics for decades, while West Bengal prime minister Mamata Banerjee and former Uttar Pradesh Mayawati prime minister have wielded considerable power. tell.
Although political parties have attracted female voters, it has not yet translated into larger numbers of female legislators. Last year, India was ranked 147th out of 193 countries for the proportion of women in the lower house – Lok Sabha, according to data released by the Parliamentary Union.
In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh poll, when BJP leader Yogi Adityanath overthrew his party to victory, less than a tenth of the candidates present across the parties were women. According to an Ashoka University track expert, they failed with 39 seats.
Uttar Pradesh is seen as a major indicator of the national mood ahead of the next general election in 2024. The Congress Party has only won seven seats in the past state polls as it has struggled to win. gaining traction since the BJP came to power in 2014.
Girl fighting
Women in the Congress party are very diverse. Sadaf Jafar, the actress who has been jailed for her role in protests against civil rights laws based on religion is now the speaker of Parliament. Another candidate is Poonam Pandey, who has led a pay rally by frontline women who are helping India meet its vaccination goals.
The rape victim’s mother has promised to work for the poor in the district if she is elected. Her daughter’s rapist, a powerful former lawmaker, was found guilty of sexual assault as well as murder and sentenced to life in prison.
For Ms Vadra, who officially joined the Congress party in 2019, this number is important. Her party has seen its star decline in Uttar Pradesh over the past two decades.
It remains to be seen whether the BJP and its rival for power in the state, the Samajwadi Party, see this as a serious challenge. The BJP has so far selected 10 women out of 107 candidates while the Samajwadi Party is pitching a female candidate from its coalition with a regional party.
“When one party makes a promise, the other side tries to deliver it,” said Sudha Pai, professor at the Center for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
“There is nothing to detract from the fact that the party of Congress has virtually no de facto organizational and worker structure,” she said. “So how much it will help in revitalizing the party is very questionable.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from the feed provided.)
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