The Congress in Karnataka is making a serious bid to woo women voters in the run-up to the 2023 Assembly election, launching a programme called ‘Na Nayaki’ (I’m a leader) in all constituencies of the State.
According to State Congress sources, the programme will run training workshops for women who have fought local body polls on the Congress symbol or even if they have not. “All women who have fought local body polls even if they have lost, whether they have fought on the party symbol or not will be reached out to under this programme. There are 22 geographical clusters where the workshops will take place covering roughly 10 Assembly seats each (Karnataka Assembly has 224 seats). After the training workshop, each person attending will be asked to connect to 10 more women in their areas,” said a source.
Suggestions made by women during the workshops may also be included in the Karnataka Congress’ manifesto. “One suggestion that was made and which will be included is that the mother’s name also be included in the Aadhaar card registration along with that of the father,” said the source.
Speaking to The Hindu , Karnataka Congress president D.K. Shivkumar said that this was an important part of preparations for the party going into the Assembly poll. “Rajiv Gandhi had said that a leader is one who creates leaders and not just followers, and that is the logic behind this programme,” he said. Currently in the pilot stage, it should be fully rolled out soon.
Women’s vote for long has been considered an undefined category dominated by choices made by men of the family, but in recent years this category has come into its own, as witnessed during the Tamil Nadu elections in 2016, Bihar in 2020 and so on. In Bihar, consistently higher percentage of voting in the last few polls is being mentioned as one of the main causes for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s wins, a politician who has assiduously courted women’s vote for many years. For the Congress in Karnataka, where unlike other States the party has a robust organisational framework and leadership, the road to the Vidhan Soudha is being seen as going through women’s vote.
