The Congress has done the unthinkable. No political party has done it before — it has fielded women candidates who have been, or are related to, victims of heinous crimes.
Only Samajwadi Party (SP) founder-president, Mulayam Singh Yadav, fielded Phoolan Devi in the 1990s. She was a victim of a gangrape who then killed the perpetrators to avenge the brutality of the crime committed against her. The gun-wielding bandit queen lost public sympathy, but won the 1996 Lok Sabha election
The Congress has done the unthinkable. No political party has done it before — it has fielded women candidates who have been, or are related to, victims of heinous crimes.
Only Samajwadi Party (SP) founder-president, Mulayam Singh Yadav, fielded Phoolan Devi in the 1990s. She was a victim of a gangrape who then killed the perpetrators to avenge the brutality of the crime committed against her. The gun-wielding bandit queen lost public sympathy, but won the 1996 Lok Sabha election from Mirzapur. To many, she was considered a victim and a perpetrator, and thus, Yadav’s decision created more controversy than commendation.
Fifty, formidable, female
The Congress national general-secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, announced candidates for 125 seats on January 13 of which 50 are women — many of whom are fighters, activists, and victims of atrocities. Women groups hailed the decision while expressing their concerns: Will they win? Will voters support them in the electoral fray? After all, it is a battle of ballots in which emotions run high with the potential winner, and not always for someone who fought injustice.
Priyanka Vadra, however, said with conviction, “We are giving them the power to fight by giving tickets to contest elections.”
Take, for instance, Asha Singh. She is the mother of the 2017 Unnao rape survivor, who fought the might of the expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Kuldeep Singh Sengar, who was convicted in the case in 2019.
The Unnao Sadar seat has been Sengar’s stronghold, and is an example of the much talked about winnability factor.
Sengar started his political career in the Congress in the 1990s, and every political party gave him a ticket as he was a powerful Rajput candidate from the area. He had manpower, muscle power, and money power. He won the 2002 assembly election from Unnao on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket, from Bangarmau and Bhagwant Nagar in 2007 and 2012 respectively on the SP ticket, and again from Bangarmau in 2017 on the BJP ticket. He was expelled from the party after being convicted of the rape.
Asha Singh mostly stays in Delhi with her daughter. She has neither the resources nor the team to contest the polls. A homemaker her whole life, Asha, in her quest for justice, lost her husband and sister, while her brother-in-law Mahesh Singh is in jail.
She said, after getting the ticket from Unnao Sadar, “We have none in the family. I am fighting this election to get justice for my brother-in-law, and for all the victims of rape.” The girl, who was a minor when she was raped, sat by her mother's side.
The rape survivor herself wished to contest the assembly election but the Congress, considering certain legal hitches, decided to field her mother instead. If Asha Singh wins, she will create history, opening the doors for many like her to test their power on the battlefield.
Another case is of Sadaf Jafar. Who will question Gandhi Vadra on the Congress’s decision to field Sadaf Jafar, who became the face of the anti-Citizen (Amendment) Act or CAA agitation in the state after she was kicked in her stomach? Supporting or opposing the CAA is simply one part of it, but her case also highlights another gross injustice: Police excesses.
The other candidates include Umbha’s tribal activist, Ram Raj Gond, who fought for the victims of the massacre in Obra in east Uttar Pradesh, and Ritu Singh, from Mohammadi constituency, who was publicly disrobed in the recently concluded panchayat polls.
The winnability factor
The Congress has set a trend, but only the result will decide how many parties will follow suit.
Prominent social activist, Madhavi Kukreja, who spent her youth fighting for the cause of women in Bundelkhand, said, “It’s a good beginning, and we hope more people from marginalised classes will get an opportunity to contest elections and win them too.”
One must credit the Congress for taking considerable risks in fielding 88 first-timers among the 125, including women candidates who made headlines for being victims or victimised for their social causes. They don’t clear the "winnability factor" that decides tickets for most political parties. However, Gandhi Vadra dismissed the winnability factor in the distribution of tickets with the words, “We have seen their ability to win as well as fight.”
Why the risk?
First, the Congress lacks a core vote , unlike say, the SP and the BSP, on which their candidates can bank on. While the SP and the BSP candidates can be confident about getting a chunk of the base votes, if not the en-bloc support of the Yadavs, Muslims and Jatavs, the Congress offers little as the rainbow coalition of Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits — on which it once thrived and survived — has completely disintegrated.
Its vote share has been on a steady decline and was at about 6% in the 2017 assembly polls and the 2019 general elections when several BJP candidates won in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and the 2017 assembly elections, riding the Narendra Modi wave.
Admittedly, there was a time when the Congress won elections on waves. The late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi rode the anti-Janata wave in 1980 and returned to power. After her assassination in 1984, her son Rajiv Gandhi swept the elections on a sympathy wave across the country, including in Uttar Pradesh. Another big win in the state was in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when the loan waiver by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yielded dividends in the form of 21 Lok Sabha seats.
However, the Congress of today is in a moribund state, showing no signs of recovery. But it appears to be sending a clear message, laying the ground for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on a vote bank that cuts through caste and community considerations. It also appears to be leaving the 2022 assembly polls for the BJP and the SP to fight it out.
From her perch in Lucknow, HT’s resident editor Sunita Aron will highlight important issues related to the coming elections in Uttar Pradesh
One Subscription.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines
to 100 year archives.
Archives
HT App & Website