Women lobby hard for ticket to mayoral poll

Leading the race in Lucknow is Mahant Divyagiri, the first woman head of the prestigious Mankameshwar temple.

Women power has started surging ahead in Uttar Pradesh, following the reservation of seats in the urban municipal elections, scheduled to be held next month.

Women aspirants have already started lobbying for tickets to contest the mayor’s post in Lucknow— considered to be the most prestigious of all seats—and almost overnight, candidates have started emerging.

Wives, sisters and even mothers of political leaders have started putting up their applications and the political leaders are promising to ensure the victory of their female relatives.

The ruling BJP, expectedly, has the maximum number of aspirants for the Lucknow mayor’s post. Since the seat is slotted in the general category, women from all walks of life are clamouring for a the BJP ticket.

Leading the race in Lucknow is Mahant Divyagiri, the first woman head of the prestigious Mankameshwar temple. The 38-year-old Mahant is a graduate from Faizabad University and gave up her studies midway in the Indian Institute of Public Health and Hygiene in Delhi to don the saffron robes in 2008. Mahant Divyagiri, apart from performing her spiritual duties, is an active social worker and is frequently seen at events related to public service. With Yogi Adityanath already heading the state government as Chief Minister, a woman priest as Lucknow mayor is exactly what the spin doctors have prescribed for the BJP to push forward its Hindutva agenda in a discreet manner.

Among others making a bid for the ticket in BJP are former bureaucrat Rekha Gupta, Sanyukta Bhatia, former MP Kusum Rai and Ranjana Bajpai who recently quit the SP to join the BJP. Advocate Ranjana Dwiwedi is also a strong contender and enjoys the backing of VHJP and Bajrang Dal.

The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, has an important claimant in Aparna Yadav, younger daughter-inlaw of Mulayam Singh Yadav.

However, keeping in mind the family dynamics, SP president Akhilesh Yadav would not prefer Aparna as the candidate. His choice would be either Juhie Singh or Dr Madhu Gupta, both of whom are popular figures in the state capital.

The Congress has not yet started the process of short listing their candidates but party workers are keen that Alka Das, wife of late Dr Akhilesh Das, should contest the mayoral poll. Dr Akhilesh Das has been a former mayor. The BSP, meanwhile, will also weigh caste options before making its choice. The floods in 2013 had left Kedarnath in Uttarakhand devastated and 20-year-old Vinita was one of them.

A resident of the Deoli Vanigram village in Rudraprayag district where 34 men had died, she was one among the many who lost her husband. The village came to be known as “Village of Widows” since there were no men left.

Vinita shifted to her parents’ home in Kumri village and was living there until she met Rakesh Kumar, a taxi driver from the same district. Rakesh encouraged her to stand on her own feet but their relationship was frowned upon in the region where widow remarriage is still a taboo. However, the couple opted for a court marriage in May 2014. They had to leave their home after the court marriage and stayed in another place in the same district. This week, the couple married again in the traditional way at the Gopinath temple in Vrindavan and Sulabh International, which works for the welfare of widows in the country, organised their marriage.

“Her marriage before the community is not just an act of courage but a learning that women’s lives do not end if she is left alone due to some reason,” said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International. Vinita , who now has two children, said, “When I lost my first husband, people there treated me as a pariah and no one would even talk to me. The local people would not even accept a court marriage so I decided to get married in a traditional manner,” she told reporters. The cadre of the terror groups in Kashmir are resorting to looting banks and ATMs, with the money supply reaching them through hawala and Hurriyat leaders drying up as a long term impact of demonetisation. The cash crunch is getting compounded due to the subsequent action taken by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which further choked their finances.

As per the security agencies, there were four incidents of bank looting till November end in 2016.

However, in 2017, after demonetisation was announced, nine incidents of looting of cash from banks and seven incidents of the entire ATM being stolen have taken place in the last 10 months.

“The cash that the banks lost in these incidents in the last 10-11 months is close to Rs 1 crore. Cash is needed by