The 39-year-old Aam Aadmi Party MLA Bandana Kumari is one of the three women who was sworn in on the first day of the Delhi Assembly Wednesday.
Her caller tune is ‘Kuch kar dikhana hai... Brastachar mitana hai (we have to prove ourselves; we have to eradicate corruption)’.
After her successful debut with AAP, she thinks her self-belief has increased. “Women are generally afraid of politics because it is looked at pejoratively. I hope that women’s role in politics would increase,” she said.
Bandana won by a margin of more than 10,000 votes. She contested against Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Ravinder Nath Bansal, who could have made a hat-trick by winning from Shalimar Bagh.
“I have worked in my community for the past 11-12 years as a social worker,” said Bandana, indicating that she wasn’t associated with any political party.
She recently met junior engineers to talk about sewage problem in her locality. Security is another problem that concerns her.
“The parks in some areas, especially urban villages of Shalimar Bagh, are not safe,” she said.
She thinks that door-to-door campaigning has worked in her favour. “People in the slums already knew me since my days as a social worker, but still I went there twice-thrice,” said Bandana, who worked for women’s rights and handled cases of domestic violence while working for a non-government organisation.
She said that her husband, who works for a computer networking firm, played a supportive role. “Fighting against liquor and cash distribution by opposing parties was very difficult,” she said, pointing out her biggest challenge during the election campaign.
Her son attends a boarding school in Pilani. She said that it helped her to concentrate on elections.
On New Year day after the swearing-in ceremony at the Assembly, she attended several meetings in her constituency with government officials, her husband said.