New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party has not quite lived up to its lofty promise of providing women more representation in the Lok Sabha, at least in the 2024 polls in Uttar Pradesh where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is himself seeking a third term as MP.
In the first general election after Modi’s government introduced a law to ensure that 33% of directly elected members to Parliament and State Legislatures are women, his party has fielded fewer women candidates than it did in the previous two elections under him held in 2014 and 2019.
The Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, 2023 – the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, as Modi likes to call it – was brought in by the government in a Special Session of Parliament last September with an eye on women voters.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The law also reserves one-third of the seats within the 33% quota for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. However, there is no certainty on when the law would be enforced as its implementation depends on the publication of a fresh census in the country and subsequently the delimitation process of electoral constituencies. Some experts have said it would be possible only in the 2029 Lok Sabha election or even beyond that.
While the BJP – like all political parties – has no legal obligation to increase representation of women even though it is showcasing the law as a major step towards women empowerment, it could have set an example in this election and illustrated that it is serious about promoting public participation of women. In Modi’s election rallies, the BJP is getting him felicitated by Nari Shakti (women) to express their gratitude to him for, among many things, bringing in a law for women reservation. The BJP has not quite walked the talk.
On the contrary, the saffron party has fielded fewer women this time in UP. In the 79 (out of a total of 80) candidates declared by the BJP-led NDA in the state, only eight are women. The figure includes a candidate of BJP’s ally Apna Dal (Soneylal). In contrast, in both 2014 and 2019, the saffron party’s alliance had 11 women as candidates.
In 2024, the BJP dropped sitting MPs Keshari Devi Patel (Phulpur), Rita Bahuguna Joshi (Allahabad) and Sanghamitra Maurya (Budaun), and losing candidate in Rampur, Jaya Prada, and replaced them with men. In Barabanki, the BJP’s sitting MP Upendra Rawat decided to not contest after a scandalous video of him surfaced on social media soon after he was declared the candidate. The BJP fielded a woman, Rajrani Rawat, in his place. That way, the BJP suffered a net drop of three women candidates.
The BJP’s main rival Samajwadi Party, contesting 13 seats fewer than the saffron party, has fielded more women candidates, 10. The total number for INDIA bloc goes to 11 with the inclusion of the Congress’ lone woman candidate Dolly Sharma, who contested in Ghaziabad.
Also read: H.D. Revanna Arrested in Kidnapping Case, Prajwal’s Anticipatory Bail Rejected
Congress
The Congress seems to have abandoned the ‘Mahila Hoon, Lad Sakti Hoon’ slogan it raised during the 2022 UP Assembly election when 40% of its candidates were women. Out of the 17 candidates declared by the party, only one is a woman.
What’s notable is that most of the women contesting the 2024 election from UP on the ticket of the two main blocs – NDA and INDIA – hail from politically-influential backgrounds or families. Many are spouses or daughters of existing or past Parliamentarians or Legislators.
First, the SP’s candidates. Iqra Hasan (Kairana) is the daughter of former MPs Tabassum Hasan and Chaudhary Munawwar Hasan. Shreya Verma (Gonda) is the granddaughter of former union minister Beni Prasad Verma. Dimple Yadav, former MP, is the wife of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and the party’s candidate in Mainpuri, won by her father-in-law, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav several times. Priya Saroj (Machhlishahr), also a debutante like Shreya Verma, is the daughter of former MP and sitting MLA Tufani Saroj. Usha Verma (Hardoi)’s father-in-law Parmai Lal was a former MP from the constituency. Usha is a former MP. She won in 1998, 2004 and 2009.
Sunita Verma (Meerut), a former mayor, is the wife of influential Dalit leader and former MLA Yogesh Verma. Annu Tandon (Unnao), who won in 2009, is known for her corporate connections. Kajal Nishad (Gorakhpur) is a well-known Bhojpuri actress. Jyotsana Gond (Shahjahanpur) is a relative of SP’s UP OBC wing president Rajpal Kashyap. Ruchi Veera (Moradabad) is a former MLA and from an influential family with clout in politics and the educational sector.
The SP’s figure could go higher with the possibility of sitting MP Afzal Ansari’s daughter Nusrat Ansari contesting in Ghazipur in his place. The Allahabad High Court is scheduled to deliver its verdict in a criminal appeal filed by the MP against his conviction by a lower court. Any adverse ruling would erase Afzal’s chances of contesting the election. Anticipating such a possibility, Ansari last week introduced his daughter, who has studied rural development at the prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences after graduating from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, to his poll campaigners.
The BJP’s candidate in Barabanki, Rajrani Rawat, is a zilla panchayat president. Maneka Gandhi (Sultanpur) is a former minister and widow of Indira Gandhi’s youngest son Sanjay Gandhi. Smriti Irani (Amethi), an actress-turned-politician, is one of Modi’s favoured ministers. In 2019, she defeated Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a major upset. Neelam Sonkar (Lalganj) is a state BJP vice-president. Rekha Verma (Dhaurahra) is BJP’s national vice-president. Hema Malini (Mathura) is a two-time MP and a Bollywood superstar, whose husband Dharmendra and son Sunny Deol have both been MPs. Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur), known for her saffron attire, is a union minister. Anupriya Patel (Mirzapur), the Apna Dal (Soneylal) candidate, is a union minister and the daughter of late Kurmi (OBC) leader Sone Lal Patel.
In 2014, 13 women were elected as MPs in UP. In 2019, that figure dropped to 11.
