March 12, 2021
At an India Today media conclave in early 2018, Sonia Gandhi made a rather candid confession: the BJP, she said, had managed to convince many people that the Congress is a ‘Muslim party’. The Congress president’s remarks, in a sense, were a tacit admission that Nehruvian secularism had failed to combat the rising tide of political Hindutva. Her words were also echoing the party’s Antony committee report, drafted in the aftermath of the 2014 election debacle but never made public, that the Congress was seen as ‘pro-Muslim’ and ‘anti-Hindu’. Three years later, as we enter another election season, the Congress’s predicament is even more stark: the party’s secular identity is once again being questioned as it is accused of openly aligning with ‘Muslim’ parties.
IUML fields woman candidate after quarter of century
By IANS |
Published on
Fri, Mar 12 2021 19:36 IST |
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Kannur: Indian Union Muslim League workers celebrate the victory of the UDF in Malappuram by-election in Kannur of Kerala on April 18, 2017. . Image Source: IANS News
Thiruvananthapuram, March 12 : For the first time in a quarter of a century, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the second biggest constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front, on Friday announced a woman among the list of its candidates for the April 6 Kerala Assembly polls.
In the 1996 Assembly polls, the IUML fielded Qamrunisa Anwar from the Calicut-2 Assembly constituency but she lost by less than 9,000 votes.
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It took Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) 25 years to field a woman candidate in the Kerala Assembly elections of April 2021. This is not a lack of female representation. This is the absence of female representation.
Noorbina Rasheed. Image@Twitter
Breaking the gender jinx is Noorbina Rasheed, leader of the IUML women s wing. She will be contesting the election from the Kozhikode South constituency. Before this, it was in 1996 that the only female candidate Kamarunnisa Anwar was fielded by the IUML. She lost to CPI(M) in 96 elections. On March 12, IUML announced its candidates for 25 of the 27 seats that it will be contesting, as an ally of Congress in the United Democratic Front.
This comes at a time when the constituent partners of Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) have gone ahead and declared their candidates. The Congress is expected to announce its final list by Sunday.