BEATING ALL ODDS

Women representatives who have risen from the grassroots to get a seat at the national table

- Jumana Shah, Rahul Noronha, Amarnath K. Menon, Avishek G. Dastidar and Dhaval S. Kulkarni

THE DEBUTANTS WOMEN ACTIVISTS

GENIBEN THAKOR, 48 CONGRESS Banaskantha Gujarat

She may not be a giant-killer in terms of votes, but Geniben has single-handedly denied the BJP a hat-trick sweep in Gujarat. The only Congress candidate to have won here, she is said to have crowdfunded her campaign (raising Rs 50 lakh) while also putting in 18hour workdays addressing bike rallies, khatla parishads (door-to-door campaigns) and the smallest of gatherings. She reportedly also manned all the booths in her constituency on polling day.

The effort paid off, as she defeated her BJP opponent Rekha Chaudhri, drawing support across her OBC cohort and some from even among the forward Chaudhris, the powerful dairy community. A grassroots worker, her first assembly poll run from Vav in 2012 ended in failure, but the never-say-die Thakor contested again in 2017 and this time defeated the BJP's dairy strongman Shankar Chaudhary. She replicated that success in 2022, and has moved from strength to strength since.

D.K. ARUNA, 64 |BJP | Mahabubnagar, Telangana

Her father and brother, both Congress leaders, were assassinated by Maoists in 2005. Aruna's husband and two of her in-laws have also been MLAs. Her own political journey began in 1996 when she contested from the Mahabubnagar LS seat, but she lost then.