Prime Minister Narendra Modi has credited women for the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) victories in several assembly elections, including Uttar Pradesh. The party has been cultivating the women's vote bank since 2014, introducing welfare measures such as Ujjwala and connected toilets. The BJP has given more tickets to women in national elections, and the party leadership is promoting women's empowerment using the Women's Reservation Bill as a major plank.
The bill was unanimously passed in 2023, but the BJP leadership has gone on the warpath, holding demonstrations and special sessions in state assemblies to condemn the Opposition. The issue of the women's quota will now be tested in the next round of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh in 2027.
Experts say women have experienced political empowerment at the panchayat level and understand the value of reservation in state assemblies and the Lok Sabha. However, they are equally intelligent to see through the BJP's strategy. The Samajwadi Party (SP) is the main challenger to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, and the party's PDA formula of consolidating backward, Dalit, and Muslim voters helped it register its best performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP has been demolishing the SP's image by raising issues of women's safety and security and focusing on issues like 'Muslim appeasement'. Will the BJP use 33% reservation to unify the vote bank of women from all castes? Would women vote on a gender issue, or their caste or religion, which have decided elections in the past?
