“I know it will be challenging but I want to give this fight my 100%,” Poonam Pandey, an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker from Shahjahanpur, told Moneycontrol. Pandey is one of the 50 women named by the Congress party on Thursday in its first list of 125 candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh election.
For the last two years, Pandey has helped her community as a healthcare worker amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In November, she said she was roughed up while protesting for better pay and working conditions for ASHAs. Soon after, she met Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress’ general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, and two months later she is all set to begin campaigning.
In the run-up to the state election in Uttar Pradesh, Vadra had announced that her party would set aside 40 percent of seats for women candidates, which means fielding them from 160 out of a total 403 constituencies. Experts say that it is a strategic move by the Congress, which has been out of power in the state for three decades, but add that it is unlikely to lead to any drastic changes in its electoral fortune.
Protests to polls
The Congress in its first list has featured a few other women candidates from varied backgrounds. They include Ritu Singh, a former Samajwadi Party (SP) member who protested against being a victim of poll violence, and Sadaf Jafar, a former state unit spokesperson of the Congress who was arrested during the anti- Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in 2019.
The common thread linking the three women is that they are all first-time contestants and that they all stood up for issues close to them. Moneycontrol spoke to all three after they were named in the first list on Thursday. While they said they were hopeful of putting up a ‘strong’ fight, they added that it is going to be a challenging task.
Pandey points out one such challenge. In Shahjahanpur, she could be up against the sitting MLA from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who has won the seat since 1989. “I am almost as old as the tenure of the sitting MLA. I don’t have that kind of experience but I am confident of giving a good fight,” Pandey said.
Jafar agrees that there will be challenges for women candidates like them but she considers it a ‘good opportunity’ to rally youth and women on issues that concern voters. “Women like us have decided to fight the difficult battle. We are fighting on a very difficult turf and hence it becomes even more important that we make sure we win,” Jafar, who is contesting from Lucknow Central, told Moneycontrol.
Currently a national coordinator of the Mahila Congress, the women’s wing of the party, she came under the spotlight after her protests against the CAA in 2019. “When I was protesting against the CAA bill, the idea was that it was against the basic ethos of the Constitution. It challenged fundamental rights so I was talking about the need for equality,” she added.
The Congress’ first list also includes Unnao candidate Asha Singh, whose daughter was raped in a case that had triggered nationwide protests. Apart from this, prominent women party leaders in the first list include Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader Aradhana Misra from Rampur Khas and Louise Khursheed, senior party leader and wife of former Union minister Salman Khursheed, from the Farrukhabad seat.
Impact on Congress’ prospects
The seven-phase Uttar Pradesh election was announced last week along with that to four other state legislatures—Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur. The Congress is a key contender in the four states. In Uttar Pradesh, though, early opinion polls have predicted the contest to be between incumbent BJP and the SP, followed by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) while the Congress is in a distant fourth position.
The Congress has faced a systemic decline in Uttar Pradesh with the 2019 Lok Sabha elections being one of its worst performances when it won only one seat, that of now party chief Sonia Gandhi. All its other candidates lost including then party chief Rahul Gandhi from Amethi. He however continues to be a Lok Sabha member, having won from Wayanad in Kerala.
The party is now betting on its move to give more tickets to women candidates. Experts feel that the ploy will not yield much results given that Congress is not a frontrunner in the current Uttar Pradesh election, but may just work if it is followed up on in future polls.
“These (contestants in first list) are all grassroots women which is definitely a good sign. I am not sure however, whether it will lead to any long-term changes in the electoral prospects for the party. This should not be a stop-gap arrangement and a move like this works only if it is followed up in future elections,” said Annapura Nautiyal, vice-chancellor of Uttarakhand-based HNB Garhwal University. She pointed that it would be interesting to see if the Congress’ strategy forces other parties in Uttar Pradesh to field more women candidates.
“The contest right now is largely between the BJP and SP. The Congress’ own graph is going down and they are looking for ways to improve their performance. We will have to wait and see what its outcome will be,” Nautiyal added.
However, for some, like Ritu Singh, the wait to find her name on the list is over. Hours after she was announced as the candidate from Mohammdi by the Congress on Thursday, she was already going door to door in her constituency. Formerly associated with her village panchayat, Singh said she was inspired by the people in her community to enter the fray.
“My door-to-door campaign has begun already. I want to win this. There is going to be a lot of struggle but I am raring to fight,” Singh told Moneycontrol. She added that she wants to fight for all the women who like her may have faced poll violence in the past and have been discouraged from contesting elections. “Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon. Aage badhungi aur ladungi,” Singh signed off, reiterating Vadra’s campaign slogan which loosely translates to “I am a girl, I can fight.”
(Anuja is an independent journalist based in New Delhi who writes at the intersection of policy and politics. She tweets @just_anuja)
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