The country's first and only all-women political party, the United Women Front, has taken up as its avowed mission to launch a tirade against trafficking of poor girls and women from Assam and other northeastern states.
The president of the Assam state unit of the UWF, which was registered with the Election Commission of India on September 28 last year, Jula Sharma informed that the party unit in the state put up a sustained fight against trafficking of women from the region that has assumed alarming proportions because of the financial backwardness of womenfolk in the region.
Sharma said the UWF, which has so far set up twelve district units in Assam, would network with prominent NGOs taking up the fight against women trafficking in the region. Sharma also said it was basically the abject poverty that drives women into the hands of unscrupulous elements running the widespread trafficking network in the region.
"These women are shipped out the region in the lure of financial security and ended up becoming sex workers or domestic help outside the state, especially in northern and western states," the UWF leader said.
The UWF, which was formed at the pioneering initiative of Suman Krishna Kant, is launching a campaign in Assam to mobilise the women folk in the state to raise their voice for legitimate place for women in politics, a hitherto male bastion.
The UWF state president said despite the place of pride occupied by women in the society in Assam and Northeast, they are very insignificantly represented in current political arena in the region.
The adviser of the UWF unit and noted social worker Suchibrata Raichowdhury said, "Evil influence of money and muscle power in politics in the country has been a major deterrent for women to take the plunge into the male bastion. The UWF has been formed to encourage capable women to join politics."
The UWF leaders said the presence of a handful of prominent women politicians in the country including the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who had to enter into politics after the death of her husband, had not been of much help for women folk in the country. They said competent women would have to be facilitated to enter politics to champion the causes of womenfolk.
One of the major objective for formation of the all-women political party is to earn 33 per cent reservation for women in all democratically elected bodies in the country.