The All India Professionals’ Congress, a department of the Congress, on Wednesday set up a ‘LGBTQIA+ Vertical’ to bring in queer representation into the party. The wing will be headed by Mario de Penha, an LGBTQIA+ activist and historian. Praveen Chakravarty, AIPC chairman, said this will make Congress the first national party to have a dedicated LGBTQIA+ wing. The AIPC was set up in 2017 to reach out and engage with working professionals and entrepreneurs in the country. Mario de Penha, who had been part of the AIPC since 2019, said: “We have been working with the LGBTQIA+ community locally in Maharashtra since 2021. I am thankful that Congress thought it important that queer people have their own space within a mainstream political organisation like Congress and like the professionals.” “I had approached Praveen Chakravarty with a desire to work on issues related to the queer community. I am very grateful to him for being open to having something like this because in no other recognised national political party right now there is any kind of representative space for the LGBT community,” he added. “.I would like to suggest to the community that their future best lies in alliance with the Congress,” he said. “I think this office is the first concrete sign of that.”
