Lucknow : At a rally the Congress Leader Priyanka Gandhi addressing the crowd asked the crowd to repeat after her: “I’m a woman, I can fight.”
The motto of the party is to win the Uttar Pradesh elections which will be held early next year. By winning over women voters who have long been marginalised but are starting to find a voice, Congress can mend it’s way.
The Uttar Pradesh result will offer a clue as to whether the Congress, which dominated Indian politics for decades, can mount a challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the next general elections in 2024.
Modi came to power in 2014 on promises of economic growth and a strong, modern India, and secured a convincing re-election victory in 2019.
His rise has come as the 136-year-old Congress has been mired in decline, in part because of leadership turmoil.
Rahul Gandhi was unable to fire up voters and quit as Congress chief in July 2019 after a general election mauling.
The party is now led by their mother, Sonia Gandhi, as interim president, compounding a perception held by some that it is old-fashioned and overly reliant on the Gandhis.
With its secular legacy, the Congress portrays itself as an inclusive national party and it will be hoping an appeal to women led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who only entered politics in 2019, will strike a chord as it presents an alternative to PM Modi’s hardline Hindu agenda.
A spate of violence against women has alarmed voters across India, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, which according to government data faces the highest number of gender crimes in the country, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra promised women change.
“I want to tell the women that I will fight for them, the Congress party will fight for them,” Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said on Sunday to cheers in the Gorakhpur stronghold of the state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath.
In Uttar Pradesh, the well-organised BJP has been criticised for its handling of violence against women as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also facing protests by farmers opposed to PM Modi’s liberalisation of agriculture.
An unusually high proportion of women attended the Gorakhpur rally – about a quarter of the estimated 40,000 people – suggesting the Congress message may be getting through.
“People, especially women, have started looking at Congress with hope, that the party will stand with women and become their voice,” said Sunita Mishra, 40, a party worker at the rally.
Voters had welcomed a Congress pledge to field women in 40% of the state’s 403 assembly constituencies, said Ms Mishra, helping her sign up 50 women as party cadre in the past few days.
The party has also promised electric scooters and smartphones to female students, free rides on government buses to all women, three free cooking-gas cylinders per family a year, and gender-based job reservations.
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