BJP’s Nudge for Organizational Space to Women Derails in UP
BJP meeting in Uttar Pradesh (Image credit BJP4UP)
MPs, Ministers Call Shots in UP BJP Organizational Polls
By Amit Kumar
New Delhi, March 19: Ambitious bid of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to find more women leaders at grassroots has come cropper in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP instruction on higher women representation found no takers in elections for the 70 party districts in the state.
The BJP is bracing up for the rollout of the Women Reservation in Legislature after Delimitation of parliamentary constituencies. Parliament enacted the 33 per cent women reservation law last year.
Out of the 70 party districts in Uttar Pradesh, women leaders were elected as heads of the BJP units in just five. Highly placed sources in the BJP said that the party had instructed for about 20 per cent women representation in the organizational elections.
“The outcome of the organizational elections in 70 districts so far have been on past trends. The Lok Sabha MPs and prabhari mantris (state ministers in-charge for two districts) influenced the election outcomes,” said a senior BJP functionary.
The organizational elections in UP have gone on caste equations. “Thirty-nine general category leaders have taken the district president posts. The other backward castes follow closely with 28 districts. Women could bag just five districts so far,” added the BJP leader.
About two dozen party districts in UP are yet to complete the organizational elections. The BJP is in the midst of the organizational elections. The polls will pave way for the ‘election’ of the next BJP president.
The inability of the BJP to find women leaders to head the district units invite questions in seriousness of the outfit to implement the reservation in legislature. Just 13 per cent women currently are members of parliament, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
Also, Rekha Gupta in Delhi is the only woman Chief Minister from the ranks of the BJP in the country. Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal is the other woman CM in the country.
Women representation in Assemblies is abysmal. It comes to single digit percentages in Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and many other states. The BJP and the Congress equally share the blame for giving fewer representations to woman in ticket distributions in elections per political observers.
They also highlight the irony that women-oriented schemes have been at the forefront in recent elections. Women voters are also outnumbering men in several state elections, they stressed.
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