In Uttarakhand, a women’s group enters panchayat poll ring to knock out ‘pradhan pati’ system
Source: India Express
Posters with the picture of a young woman wearing a faint smile, and her educational qualifications highlighted in bold red, are plastered across the village of Jheepa in Uttarakhand’s Almora district. Though at first glance it looks like any other poster, the message behind the absence of a man in the frame is not lost on anyone.
Sunita Devi, 32, is vying to become the gram pradhan of Jheepa, which votes in the second phase of the panchayat elections on July 28. She is the president of a women’s group called the Rachnatmak Mahila Manch that has thrown its hat in the ring for the first time since its inception in 2013, pledging to abolish the practice of “pradhan pati (husbands of elected women officials running the show as their proxies)”.
The decision to take the electoral plunge was taken at a cluster-level leader meeting of the nine “shram sakhis” — heads of the 11 clusters falling under the group — on Panchayati Raj Diwas on April 24, following which candidate selection was conducted in village-level meetings.
Full article available here.
Posters with the picture of a young woman wearing a faint smile, and her educational qualifications highlighted in bold red, are plastered across the village of Jheepa in Uttarakhand’s Almora district. Though at first glance it looks like any other poster, the message behind the absence of a man in the frame is not lost on anyone.
Sunita Devi, 32, is vying to become the gram pradhan of Jheepa, which votes in the second phase of the panchayat elections on July 28. She is the president of a women’s group called the Rachnatmak Mahila Manch that has thrown its hat in the ring for the first time since its inception in 2013, pledging to abolish the practice of “pradhan pati (husbands of elected women officials running the show as their proxies)”.
The decision to take the electoral plunge was taken at a cluster-level leader meeting of the nine “shram sakhis” — heads of the 11 clusters falling under the group — on Panchayati Raj Diwas on April 24, following which candidate selection was conducted in village-level meetings.
Full article available here.