- Congress will give ticket to Reena Setia from Sanver, but has shortage of contenders on other seats
- Two sitting BJP MLAs are women
- BJP can give one more ticket to a woman
Milind Muzumdar, Indore,
The Women’s Reservation Bill has been presented in Parliament. According to the manner in which the opposition parties have promised support, this bill is certain to be passed. Although it will not affect the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, due to this bill there will definitely be pressure on Congress and BJP to give tickets to more and more women.
Due to the environment created for women’s reservation, BJP and Congress will have to change the process of candidate selection. Congress will have to make a separate strategy because it has a woman contender for only one out of 9 seats in the district. Congress will give a ticket to Reena Setia from the Sanver, but it will be short on other seats.
BJP already has two women MLAs in the district in the form of Usha Thakur and Malini Gaur. The party has to give only one ticket to another woman. BJP has an established woman leader in Kavita Patidar, who is also a Rajya Sabha member.
Considering the new political situation, BJP can shift Usha Thakur to Depalpur or Indore constituency number one and field Kavita Patidar from Mhow. With this the party will have three women candidates. Congress is going to face trouble. Apart from Sanver, Congress can field women candidates in area number 4 but its contenders on other seats are all men. Like Sanjay Shukla in area number 1, Chintu Chowksey in area number 2, Pintu Joshi or Ashwin Joshi in area number 3, Satyanarayan Patel or Swapnil Kothari in area number 5, Jitu Patwari from Rau seat, Vishal Patel from Depalpur. Congress also has scope from Mhow seat but no strong woman leader has staked claim here. Due to women reservation, Congress will have to give tickets in Mhow to women through parachute candidates.
In such a situation, there is a possibility that Shobha Ojha may be relegated from constituency number 5 and a woman from Satyanarayan Patel’s family may be given the ticket from another place. Whatever may be the case, Congress’s dilemma is going to increase due to women’s reservation. Due to this reservation, the biggest beneficiary will be Reena Borasi Setia, whose ticket is being blocked by her family members. Now the possibility of giving her ticket from Sanver is almost certain.
BJP’s Mahila Morcha more effective
Cells in the name of Mahila Morcha have been formed in the organizations of both Congress and BJP. If compared, BJP Mahila Morcha appears to be more effective than Mahila Congress. BJP has an army of women leaders, whereas there is a relative lack of women leaders in Congress. The interesting situation is that this is the case in Congress when leaders like Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are leading the party at the top level. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has also done a lot in the direction of women empowerment. For the first time, the Prime Minister has included a woman Defense Minister and a woman Finance Minister in his cabinet. Nirmala Sitharaman is the first woman Finance Minister who has presented four budgets of the country while taking charge independently. Talking about Madhya Pradesh level, Uma Bharti from BJP has been the Chief Minister of the state. Whereas from the Congress side, women in the form of Jamuna Devi have reached the post of Deputy Chief Minister. It is clear that BJP has promoted women in a planned manner. The BJP central government has also given a tribal woman President to the country for the first time. Congress had also made Pratibha Patil the President but she did not come from the reserved category.
More importance to women leaders of BJP
The political history of Indore is witness to the fact that women leaders of BJP have got more importance in the district than those of Congress. Talking about the present assembly, Usha Thakur from Mhow and Malini Gaur from area number 4 are BJP MLAs. Whereas from the Congress side no woman leader has been able to reach the Assembly yet. Although Congress gave tickets, it did not succeed. In the 2018 elections, Congress did not give ticket to even a single woman. Before that, in 2013, field number Archana Jaiswal was given the ticket but she did not win. Sumitra Mahajan has been a member of the Lok Sabha eight times from BJP. Apart from the post of Union Minister, Sumitra Mahajan has also been honored with the post of Lok Sabha Speaker.
