Chandrani Murmu, 25, has become the youngest-ever member of Lok Sabha, the Lower House of the Indian Parliament.
“Hira” or “ Chandu”, as she is lovingly called, set the record as she won the Keonjhar Lok Sabha seat in Odisha. This representative of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) party had finished her B.Tech and was looking for government jobs, when she came into politics unexpectedly.
When her uncle, a retired government official, Harmohan Soren, had asked her to contest in the general elections, Murmu did not take him seriously. She was in for a shock on April 2 as she stood in front of BJD leader and state chief minister Naveen Patnaik who asked her to work hard when given the party ticket to contest the polls.
Murmu won the reserved seat for Scheduled Tribes, gaining votes on the promise of development. As the results where declared on May 23, the “daughter of the village” won the poll, defeating two-time BJP MP Ananta Nayak by a margin of nearly 67,000 votes.
Prior to the elections, Chandrani had to put up with scandalous stories spun on her by political rivals. Even her morphed, obscene pictures were circulated on WhatsApp. However, the BJD candidate won her way through.
“No woman should be subjected to such humiliation,” she noted.
As her parliamentary career begins, Murmu dreams and hopes to represent her people and their needs well. Rather than making promises that cannot be kept, she has a few ideas on feasible developmental projects for her constituency. She plans to focus on providing employment and education, as well as establish a railway line between Keonjhar and Bhubaneshwar, the state capital. Though Keonjhar holds immense iron reserves, along with other rich mineral resources, the place lacks what may help in human development and is deemed backward on several parameters.
“I am aware of the tag attached to Keonjhar. As the announcement of my candidature was made only a few weeks before filing of nomination, I did not have enough time to visit all corners of Keonjhar. Frankly, I am not aware of the challenges I have to face being a people’s representative. My first priority will be to know the constituency and spend as much as time with the people,” she said.
In the recent polls, BJD fielded women in one-third of the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies in Odisha. The party secured 12 seats and five of them were won by women members, including Murmu. The tally of women MPs from the state is seven this time when two BJP winners too are included.