Chennai: Congress leader Smt. Sonia Gandhi on October 14, 2023, said that instead of mitigating the problems faced by women, the past nine years had seen a sustained effort by the Modi government to turn women purely into symbols, to be counted and appreciated only in their restricted traditional roles in a patriarchal framework.

Addressing the Women’s Right Conference organised in Chennai by DMK MP Kanimozhi to commemorate the birth centenary of former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, Smt. Sonia Gandhi said that just as in every other frontier of rights, freedoms, equity, and equality, even among women, all the remarkable gains of the past 70 years had disappeared. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Shri M.K. Stalin also took part in the event.

AICC General Secretary Smt. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who addressed a public gathering in Tamil Nadu for the first time, demanded immediate implementation of women’s reservation in Parliament and Assemblies. “We, the women of India, have no more time to waste. It is our right to be counted in the political process. I demand that our worth is valued and respected as a political instrument for our own empowerment,” she said.

Smt. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also urged women to put an end to the glorification of their tolerance for injustices committed against them day-after-day and reject any system societal, religious or political which thrived on oppression and forced them to collude with it.

Smt. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra turned emotional and recalled the day, 30 years ago, when she visited Tamil Nadu to receive the body of her father, Rajiv Gandhi, who had been assassinated by the LTTE. “On the darkest night of my life, I first set foot on this land of Tamil Nadu to collect my father’s shattered body. I was 19 years old, and my mother was just a few years younger than I am today. As the door of the plane opened, the night grabbed us and drew us in, but I was not afraid of it because the worst thing I could have imagined had already happened. A few hours earlier, my father had been killed,” she recalled.

She said that she had walked towards her mother that night knowing that the words she was to speak would break her heart. “Yet I spoke, and I watched as the light of happiness was extinguished from her eyes forever,” she said.

The conference, which was chaired by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Shri MK Stalin, the programme was attended by a large number of women from all walks of life. Earlier, Former Congress President Smt. Sonia Gandhi and Smt. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were received by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, DMK MPs Kanimozhi Karunanidhi and T R Balu at the airport. A large number of Congress workers gave a rousing welcome to Sonia Gandhi ji and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra ji at the Chennai airport.