Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Friday led in a rally with her party\u2019s women\u2019s wing in Kolkata, which also informally marked the launch of the party\u2019s Lok Sabha campaign.<\/p>\n
Banerjee has been organising an International Women\u2019s Day rally with the women members of her team for the past few years. In fact, in 2014, her party had started the Lok Sabha campaign on the same date, though the election dates had been announced by then.<\/p>\n
Therefore, though the election dates have not yet been announced, the party continued with its Women\u2019s Day rally, considering it to be an auspicious day to start off the election campaign. It was not announced by the party as an election campaign though, but more of a march to ensure there was interaction with people, focusing on women\u2019s issues.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, Banerjee tweeted about the Women\u2019s Reservation Bill not being passed yet in the Parliament and mentioned that her party, the Trinamool Congress had 35 per cent women MPs in the Parliament. She also mentioned that the local bodies had 50 per cent seats reserved for women candidates. Banerjee also mentioned in her tweets that the Bengal government had recently launched health insurance smart cards issued to women, \u201crecognising her as head of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen are the backbone of our society. They are our pride. On #IWD2019 I want to congratulate all the women around the world. Today I will participate in a march to mark the occasion in #Kolkata\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
Banerjee added that: \u201cOur government is committed to the welfare and empowerment of women. Recently we launched the Swasthya Sathi health insurance smart cards. We have decided to issue these cards to a woman member of the family, recognising her as the head of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
About the need for women\u2019s reservation for political representation, Banerjee wrote: \u201cWhile the Women\u2019s Reservation Bill has not yet been passed in #Parliament, I am proud that our party @AITCofficial has 35% women MPs in the 16th<\/sup> Lok Sabha. We have also reserved 50% seats in local bodies for women candidates #IWD2019\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Women are the backbone of our society, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":4754,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-bengal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4753"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=4753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}