KOLKATA: A hitherto unknown face from an in any other case obscure hamlet within the Sunderbans delta of West Bengal is all of the sudden below the state’s election highlight as an “embodiment of the BJP’s fight against atrocities on women under Mamata Banerjee’s TMC dispensation”. Thirty-something Rekha Patra, a housewife from the troubled area of Sandeshkhali and an alleged torture sufferer within the arms of arrested TMC chief Shajahan Sheikh and his cohorts, walked protest rallies in opposition to her oppressors carrying her woman youngster on her waist alongside scores of different girls agitators from the area when native agitation in opposition to TMC leaders not too long ago blew up.
Patra is now the BJP’s Lok Sabha nominee from Basirhat, a TMC stronghold on the southern-most fringes of North 24 Parganas district, and is the only real candidate of her celebration thus far to have acquired a private phone name from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who talked to her about her marketing campaign preparations and was lauded by the chief as “Shakti Swarupa” (an embodiment of the essence of Shakti).
She can be the celebration’s shock candidate via whom the BJP is making an attempt to make its strongest political assertion in Bengal: that it plans to steal the difficulty of girls’s security from below the sails of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress for the upcoming polls. Among essentially the most vocal Sandeshkhali protestors, it was primarily based on Patra’s grievance that Bengal police arrested Shibaprasad Hazra, an area muscleman and Sheikh’s affiliate. Patra can be believed to have been a part of the group that met Modi on the sidelines of his public assembly in Barasat on March 6 and associated the plight of Sandeshkhali girls to the PM.
“I have no words to describe how I feel,” Patra informed reporters right here following her dialog with Modi on Tuesday. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be chosen for this task. If I get elected, I would do all that is required to ensure that women of Basirhat do not suffer the trauma we underwent in Sandeshkhali,” the political greenhorn stated.
Patra is the spouse of a migrant employee in Tamil Nadu. She additionally promised to work in direction of creating job alternatives in Bengal and put efficient brakes on inhabitants migration in quest of work. “I will also ensure that farmlands, forcefully snatched away from our brothers, are returned to them so that they can cultivate their land according to their choice,” she added.
Ecstatic about her dialog with the Prime Minister, Patra informed Modi that she felt good and reassured that he was standing by her and others on the receiving finish of “Trinamool torture”. “It feels like Ram ji is standing with us,” she informed the chief throughout her dialog. Interestingly, Patra appears to have already earned the belief of her “dissenters” in Sandeshkhali who protested her candidature solely a day in the past by placing up posters stating their disapproval.
“It was a mistake on our part. We were swayed by some local TMC workers who misled us into putting up the protest. We are sorry for what we did and pledge to stand by you in the upcoming polls,” a lady was heard stating in a video circulating in social media circles on Tuesday whose authenticity PTI couldn’t verify.
“It was a misunderstanding that has now been sorted. These women acted under TMC pressure and have now realised their mistake. They are with us. We will fight for all women of Sandeshkhali and we are ready to give a befitting reply to the TMC,” the BJP’s Basirhat candidate declared.
