Lok Sabha elections 2024: We expect Congress to field 5 women candidates from Maharashtra, says Alka Lamba

Alka Lamba. Pic/X

All India Mahila Congress president Alka Lamba on Tuesday said that the women's wing of the party expects that at least five out of the total 48 in Maharashtra are allotted to women candidates by the party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections 2024, the PTI reported.

Lok Sabha elections are likely to be held in April-May this year.

The Congress will be contesting the polls as a constituent of the INDIA bloc.

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"There are 48 seats in Maharashtra and we (Congress) are contesting around 20. We have received the biodata of women for 20 seats as they wish to contest as our party's candidates. Their biodatas have been forwarded to the party's Maharashtra's in-charge Ramesh Chennithala and state unit president Nana Patole," she said, as per the PTI.

"We expect that five women are given candidature in the state (by the Congress)," she said, according to the PTI.

Alka Lamba announced that if the INDIA bloc comes to power at the Centre after the elections, hurdles in the implementation of the Women's Reservation Bill will be removed and it will be implemented in the country, the news agency reported.

"Hurdles in the implementation of the Women's Reservation Bill will be removed and it will be implemented by the time of the legislative assembly polls to be held in five states of the country after the Lok Sabha elections 2024," she said, the PTI reported on Tuesday.

Alka Lamba lambasted the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government for implementing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

"The Act would have come into force 10 years ago itself. But it was done now to divert people's attention from the problems of farmer's agitation, electoral bonds," she said.

The Centre on Monday implemented the contentious CAA 2019, a move that comes four years after the contentious law was passed and paves the way for citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who came to India before December 31, 2014.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that his party's government would carry out a caste census and an economic and financial survey, and also strengthen the Forest Rights Act, reported the PTI.

According to the PTI, speaking in tribal-dominated Nandurbar district of Maharashtra as his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered the state from Gujarat, he said tribals make up eight per cent of India's population, and the Congress would ensure that they get a proportionate stake in the development.

(with PTI inputs)