By Raza Hasnain Naqvi

AICC General Secretary and UP incharge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has announced on October 19, 2021, that Congress will give 40 per cent of party tickets for UP assembly elections 2022 to ‘mahila’ candidates. If you are interested in contesting assembly elections as a woman candidate of Congress, you need to have certain qualities.

There are 403 assembly seats available for political candidates in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in February-March. Priyanka Gandhi has pledged that the Congress party will contest in 161 of those seats with a mahila candidate. In other words, 40 per cent of those assembly election tickets will be reserved for women only.

Congress has made clear that ‘merit’ will be the determining factor to get a Congress ticket. So, suppose you are an aspiring woman interested in being a politician and hopefully raising public problems and issues honestly on relevant platforms and stages. In that case, you have a good chance of being a Congress candidate.

But you better have merit and some required personality traits to give you such a chance. Here are seven qualities you need to have that may show Priyanka Gandhi and her team that you are worthy of being a party candidate.

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1. People in your area know you. If you intend to be a neta, a leader of people, then hopefully, residents of your constituency area should know about you. Being an unknown mahila in a constituency from where you intend to seek a ticket will not work.
2. You can speak well. You should know the art of public speaking. In other words, you should be able to express yourself comfortably in front of a public, whether standing on a stage, standing on a vehicle, standing in front of any mic, or sitting on a chair during a press conference. If you can’t speak well as a mahila candidate and formulate your thoughts, you don’t have much chance of getting a party ticket.

3. You are comfortable meeting different kinds of people. If you plan to enter the field of politics and be a politician or a mahila neta, you need to be comfortable meeting different kinds of people. Some will exhibit positive vibes for you and others will be hostile towards you. There will also be all kinds of multiple human behaviours that you will need to absorb and react to once you become a mahila ummeedwaar of a political party. Being mentally strong to face all these different personality traits will be an added asset for you.
4.  You like to solve the problems of people. You should have an inner desire to solve the problems of people. You should feel unhappy that people in your constituency face some pain and there is no one to help them. You should have shown initiative to solve those problems. It is said that women can be more compassionate and better listeners than men. Being a mahila candidate, you need to have used your inherent powers to help people.
    
5. You have documentary proof that you have helped people in your area. You need to have documentary evidence that you have helped many people in your area. You have served them in some way and made their life better. Copies of all your letters, emails, and follow-up initiatives done at your end that are in black and white should be with you. Preferably they should also be there in your Google hard drive that you can access any time with your smartphone. Such evidence will make you a strong candidate for a party ticket.

6. You can convince people to donate money for your election campaign. It is not easy to get people to donate money for things. People want to be confident that you will use their donation fruitfully. It would mean a big plus point for you if you can convince well-off people in your community and even the not-so-rich to contribute a small amount for your election campaign. Having this quality can push you to be the first in the line for getting a Congress ticket for the assembly election.

7. You are comfortable expressing your thoughts on social media. Everybody knows the status of social media today, especially how social media users react to women there. As soon as you start sharing your thoughts about some issue, some stranger will end up either liking it or disliking it with a crude comment on your social media platform. So if you can still be active on well known social media platforms, build a following, or already have a following, you are a strong candidate. Being mildly concerned by critical comments is fine, but getting a party ticket will be difficult if you tend to lose sleep over words that disturb you.

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Just a Thought

Here is a statistic that shows the men and women voter percentages in recent assembly elections. In 2007, there were 40% more men voters than women; in 2012, there were 20% more men voters than women; and in 2017, there were 11% more men voters than women. In other words, in 2022, you can expect women voters to be in the same numbers or more than men in the elections.

Some naysayers doubt this 40% move by Congress. They say why hasn’t this initiative been implemented in states like Punjab and Uttarakhand, where Congress has a good chance of coming to power. Their next question is that Congress does not have a 40% cadre of women yet, so reserving 40% party tickets for women will not make much of an impact.

Some political critics have gone so far as to say that since Congress has negligible presence in Uttar Pradesh today, they can field anyone they like. UP assembly election losses will not matter to Congress.

By the way, the last date for submitting your name as a mahila candidate for consideration is November 15, 2021.