The Hindu : New Delhi News : Women turn out in big way in Rae Bareli

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Women turn out in big way in Rae Bareli

Atiq Khan

Photo: Subir Roy

Adding colour: It was festival time for women voters in Rae Bareli on polling day.

RAE BARELI: Rural women dressed in shocking-pink and bright-yellow sarees, as they would to a village fair, were on Thursday a sight to behold as they went to exercise their franchise in the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi is seeking a third successive term in Parliament from this Nehru-Gandhi pocket borough; she also won a byelection here in 2006. The BSP’s R.S. Kushwaha and the BJP’s R.B. Singh are the other candidates. The Samajwadi Party is not in the fray.

The outcome is expected to be on predictable lines. Even workers of the BSP and BJP camps concede it is a one-sided contest.

As the women dressed in their traditional best headed for the polling booths in the primary school polling station in Sarrawan village in Harchandpur (reserved) Assembly segment, it was clearly festival time for them. The heat wave sweeping the area did not deter them from casting their votes.

However, the large turnout of women was not confined to the rural areas. In the SJS School polling station in Rae Bareli Sadar Assembly segment situated in the heart of town, several woman voters had brought their small children to the polling stations. As the little ones made merry in the kindergarten section, their mothers stood in the queue.

With a population of around 15,000, Takiya is a predominantly Muslim locality in Rae Bareli Sadar and has often been described as a Congress stronghold.

Feverish activity was witnessed on Thursday as the voters — burqa-clad Muslim women and the male members of the area — made a beeline to the Wasi Naqvi National Inter College polling centre.

There were, however, voices of protest from many who were denied the opportunity to vote. Shahid Hussain, sporting two voter identity cards, said: “My name is in the electoral rolls with the polling officer, but I was not allowed to vote.” The case of Abdulla’s sister Asra was similar. They complained that they had been declared missing (“vilupt”) in the voters’ list.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, Rae Bareli recorded a voting percentage of 48.42 and Ms. Gandhi got 58.75 per cent of the popular vote. In 2006, her vote share was 80.49 per cent.

For the average Congressman in Rae Bareli what seemed to matter the most this time was what the polling percentage in the constituency would be and what Ms. Gandhi’s victory margin and the popular votes accumulated by her would be.

Octogenarian Shiv Prasad Mishra has seen elections in Rae Bareli since 1957 and is not at all surprised at the decline in the polling percentage over the years.

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