“Main aaj yahan apne chacha Bhagwant Mann ji ke liye vote maangne aayi hoon (I have come to seek votes for my uncle Bhagwant Mann),” said Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s daughter Harshita, a 26-year-old IIT-Delhi graduate, who landed in Dhuri in Sangrur district over the weekend along with her mother to campaign for the party’s chief ministerial candidate.
Sunita Kejriwal chipped in: “People have already decided to vote for Bhagwant Mann. They understand AAP has done work in Delhi and will do it here too.”
As Punjab heads into a crucial election, candidates have been leaving nothing to chance, falling back on their women relatives to put in a word for them.
Educated, urbane and confident, the young girls — in some cases, wives, daughters-in-law, mothers and sisters of the candidates — strike an almost instant chord with the crowd. The presence of the women campaigners has also steered the conversation on the ground towards issues of women’s safety, employment and the need to crack down on the drug menace.
Over 200 km from where Harshita campaigned for Mann, in Amritsar East constituency, Navjot Singh Sidhu’s 27-year-old daughter Rabia stood on stage to publicly declare: “I won’t get married till my father wins.”
While Sidhu’s wife, Navjot Kaur Sidhu, herself a former MLA, has been filling in for her mostly absent husband in the constituency, it is for the first time that Rabia has also jumped on to the bandwagon. “Honesty always wins, so my father will win,” she said during one of her campaigns. At one point, she openly expressed her displeasure at the Congress choosing Charanjit Singh Channi over Sidhu as its CM candidate, even taking a dig at how the “poor CM” has Rs 133 crore in his bank account.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president and former deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal’s daughter Harleen has also made a special appearance in his constituency, Jalalabad. The 22-year-old greets voters warmly, making sure to hug girls her age, and seek votes in the name of women’s security.
Congress candidate Amarinder Singh Raja Warring’s 14-year-old daughter Aekom talks about development while putting in a word for her father in Gidderbaha. The Class 9 student says, “If you think my dad has worked for you, please vote for the Congress.” The campaigns of Batala Congress candidate Ashwini Sekhri and BJP nominee from Sujanpur, Dinesh Singh Babbu, both three-time legislators, are being handled by women.
Japleen Kaur Joshi, daughter-in-law of former BJP legislator and now SAD candidate from Amritsar North, Anil Joshi, goes door to door to campaign for him. Talking to The Indian Express, Japleen said she gets no briefings from her father-in-law. “I talk about papa’s vision for the city, how he plans to use imported technology to make the city safer for women, and how he will bring employment to their doorstep,” says the architect from Chandigarh who moved to Amritsar after her marriage a year-and-a-half ago.
