On January 20, following two days of stimulating discussion and deliberation to perk up the party ahead of next year’s general elections, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said in Jaipur, “I assure you that I will personally continue to press for the passage of the law that would provide for one-third reservation for women in parliament and state legislatures.”

It was a heady occasion for votaries of the women’s reservation bill, which has been stuck in parliament for years now — primarily due to opposition from political parties presumably too stuck up to consider parting every third seat to a woman legislator. That Sonia Gandhi, a woman at the helm of the country’s oldest political party for the longest period (over a dozen years, and the count looks set to go on), made the statement, and that too at a widely-discussed party “chintan shivir” (or deliberation camp) that had special session for gender and justice, was all the more galvanising.

On February 14, Tripura, a state on the back-of-beyond north-eastern corner of the country and sharing borders with Bangladesh on three sides (the state is more easily accessible by road from Dhaka and Sylhet in Bangladesh than from most parts of India), goes to the polls to elect its next assembly. That’s the first spell of election since the grand old party’s grand ‘chintan baithak’. The Congress, which is making a renewed effort to throw out the Left Front government in Agartala — “we have ousted them from Kerala and West Bengal and now time has come to throw them out of Hindustan,” an unusually aggressive Rahul Gandhi said at a rally in Agartala on Tuesday — has fielded 48 candidates for the 60 seats in the state.

Only four of them are women.

On February 15 and 16, the Gandhi scion, recently selected as the party’s vice-president and effectively its prime ministerial candidate for 2014 elections, is slated to meet pradesh Congress committee (PCC) presidents and Congress central legislature party leaders in New Delhi. There will be only one woman leader: Sheila Dikshit, the Delhi chief minister, as PTI reported.

Two others who could have represented the party have been victims — whether self-inflicted, for reasons of sycophancy or otherwise is a different debate — of electoral results of late: one falling after a defeat and the other after a victory. Rita Bahuguna Joshi resigned as the Uttar Pradesh PCC president last year following the party’s debacle in the assembly polls, while Vidya Stokes gave way to Virbhadra Singh recently as the CLP leader after the party gained power in Himachal Pradesh.

Not that other political parties are promising the moon to women but the nation reserves the right to demand a fair share from its oldest, most visible and most popular party — and one led by a woman for a record length to boot.

If charity begins at home, then women’s reservation bill could as good as kiss the Congress hand and say a final goodbye, amid promises of rosy platitudes once in a while — at least going by as ostensible realpolitik. And if the maxim morning shows the day holds true, happy shelving to the bill. And please put some ice on the coffin before it begins to stink, dear parliamentarians.