Bhubaneswar: Call it the after-effect of BJD president and chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s decision to keep 33% of Lok Sabha seats for women in the state followed by Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee reserving 41% of the LS seats for them, Congress too plans to follow suit.Niranjan Patnaik, president of the party’s state unit, on Wednesday said the AICC has asked him to recommend more names of women aspirants for both the assembly and Lok Sabha seats. “We are going to field more women candidates as instructed by our party high command. Unlike the BJD and TMC, we cannot specify the percentage of seats that we intend to keep for the women candidates. But we will give priority to women candidates,” Niranjan said after returning from Delhi where he along with some other senior leaders had been camping since Monday to expedite the finalization of tickets for the ensuing four-phase simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state.In 2014, Congress had fielded women candidates in eight of the 147 assembly seats and two of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state. However, all of them were defeated with some losing their deposits as well.Though Niranjan did not disclose the exact number of probable women candidates, he said the final list will have a considerably good representation of women, both in the assembly and Lok Sabha seats. The eight assembly constituencies from where Congress had fielded women candidates in 2014 were Jashipur, Binjharpur, Hindol, Talcher, Baramba, Chilika, Khandapada and Daspalla. Puri and Cuttack were among the LS seats from where the Grand Old Party had fielded women candidates.With the AICC pressing for the inclusion of more women in the list of candidates, the process of finalizing the names for party tickets is likely to be delayed. “We will do the groundwork for two or three more days as far as the selection of the aspiring women candidates is concerned,” Niranjan said. “The list of candidates for at least 15 Lok Sabha and 105 assembly constituencies in Odisha have almost been finalised,” he added.Quizzed about the last-minute decision to enhance the number of women candidates after BJD and TMC, Congress downplayed the proposed move. “We have many deserving women candidates in several seats. I am hopeful that these women will be considered. Congress has long been an advocate of women’s empowerment in the country. A number of women-centric welfare measures will be taken if Congress forms government in the state,” Mahila Congress state president Sumitra Jena said.Significantly, when Naveen had in December last year written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to initiate steps to ensure 33% reservation of women in Parliament and state assemblies, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had extended his support to the initiative.

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