Kolkata: Women voters in West Bengal played a key role in ensuring the landslide victory for the Trinamool Congress in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections. Elections for a number of municipal corporations and municipalities in the state are scheduled next year.
So naturally, the ruling party is depending on the women voters this time as well. Despite having a separate women’s wing, Trinamool Congress, like the Left Front, has never thought of utilizing them effectively to reach out to every household in the state.
However, now there will be a change of strategy. The target is to develop a more in-depth public relations with the women voters in the state.
To recall, since its inception in 2011, the Trinamool Congress government had been focusing on women's empowerment through the introduction of special developmental schemes tailored exclusively for women. Women reservation in the panchayats and projects like Kanyashree and Rupashree just to mention a few.
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Through the recent Lakkhir Bahnadar scheme, the state government has doled out Rs 500 to 1,000 pocket money for household women in the state. Trinamool Congress sources said that the Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee wants to push her party’s schemes and also expose the lopsided policies of the Union government in every household. Hence, special women’s team will come into play.
They will reach out to the household women with sweets, update the significance of different developmental schemes initiated by the state government specially tailored for women and also encourage them to be a part of the movement against the anti-people policies of the Union government like rising fuel price and skyrocketing inflation, among others.
Speaking about the new plan, party Lok Sabha member and the state president of Trinamool Congress’s women’s wing, Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, said that this is not meant for political gains since there are no major elections around. “We want to be the true friends of the women of Bengal. We want them to talk to us freely. Of course, this is a public relations exercise,” she said.
