Bironkhal is mirror of feminine mood
Sidharth Mishra
Source: Pioneer
14/02/2007 Type: Website English
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Bironkhal is mirror of feminine mood

Sidharth Mishra | Lansdowne (Garhwal)

Uttar manthan Election 2007

After two days of heavy downpour, the sunrays falling on snow covered mountains create a magic. The four-hour drive from Baijro to Lansdowne on National Highway 119 is through pine forests circumventing round the gorges of several tributaries of Ganga. The drive is punctuated by groups of women in Garhwali wrappers and heavy nose rings dancing on the roads wearing the Congress or the Lotus cap as the case may be.

The drive is largely through Bironkhal constituency, which is witnessing an epic battle between a political matriarch and what some would like to call a kid in comparison. With women being majority voters on many seats, Bironkhal may just be the mirror of feminine mood in Uttarakhand.


Women out-score men in six districts and 33 of the 70 assembly seats of Uttarakhand, including Bironkhal. There are a total of 30,09,913 male and 29,51,437 female voters. There are four other Assembly seats where men edge past women by just 300 to 400 votes. Most of the women majority constituencies are in the lap of Himalayas. Not surprising that the women played a decisive role in the agitation to demand creation of a separate hill State. The Rampur Tiraha incident in Muzzafarnagar district continues to haunt the women of the hills.

In Bironkhal, Amrita Rawat, Power Minister in Congress government, is faced with a challenge from 25-year-old just out of college Deepti Rawat. The BJP's young knight in armour had unsuccessfully contested the Delhi University Students Union elections a few years ago. Thereafter, she picked up job as a reporter in a news channel and now back to politics.

Amrita Rawat is wife of Satpal Maharaj, the spiritual guru of a large number of Garhwalis and is addressed as Mataji or Bahenji. Deepti is just Deepti. The older women in Bironkhal are pretty upset that Deepti's glamour is giving Amrita's grandeur a run for her money.

"In the hills, women manage families. Men either go out to the plains to earn livelihood or drown themselves in liquor. It's left to the women to rear the family. They are hardworking, intelligent and assertive. Women are always targeted by the Government for training in programmes related to forest and agriculture. Training men would be waste of time and money," says BBS Rawat, a retired forest department official.

Planning her campaign to focus on the powerful women voters, Amrita Rawat moves with a mandali of female workers and makes it a point to approach women in every village. Satpal Maharaj must be the richest man in Uttarakhand. Every upper bracket private vehicle moving in Bironkhal is taken to be part of Maharaji's cavalcade. The arrival of Amrita Rawat's mandali is preceded by the arrival of entourage of her servants and attendants. Carrying the halo of Guru Mata, Amrita avoids accepting food from her disciples. Her entourage rather distributes prasad. It's seldom that the God's chosen one choose to contest elections.

On the other hand, Deepti Rawat has adopted bindaas style - chappa chappa bhajappa. Her workers have indeed painted every nook and cranny of the constituency with saffron and Lotus. Her photo on the BJP posters bears the definite imprint of Prem Studio of Delhi University. She has created a stir among the young and is also getting targeted by malicious gossip. A whisper campaign gaining ground is that she joined politics because of a failed career in modelling. The substantial Brahmin population of the area is upset with BJP for fielding a Thakur greenhorn at the cost of old warhorse Pushkar Joshi.

The Rawats of Bironkhal are not the only prominent women contesting polls. There is Indira Hridayesh, the powerful Minister and a Chief Ministerial candidate, from Haldwani in Kumaon.


-- See Indira Hridayesh's story in another context in the next issue

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