Speaker's wife enjoys limelight, jokes as hubby readies for new stint

Manjit Dhir clapped and laughed as her husband made a light-hearted reference to her in an overcrowded meeting room on Friday at the Delhi BJP office.

Delhi Speaker M S Dhir, while greeting the audience at a press conference, began by saying, “Friends, brothers and sisters, except my wife sitting in the audience,” sparking a  spontaneous wave of laughter in the room.

As the Speaker laughed uproariously at his own jest, he tried to explain his carefully selected opening words, “If I don’t exclude my wife from among the sisters, she might not serve me dinner.”

The wife of the Speaker, who sat on the front row with others, joined the laugh riot once again.

Dressed in a green suit, Manjit Dhir seemed excited as her husband announced his decision to quit the Aam Aadmi Party and join the BJP. “All is well that ends well,” she said, reacting to her husband’s political move to switch party.

The 56-year-old homemaker said her husband’s political life has seen a lot of action in the past one year.

“He first joined the anti-corruption campaign, then joined the AAP, won the Assembly elections, became the Assembly speaker and now he has joined the BJP,” she said.

Support for decision
On whether she was happy with her husband’s decision to join the BJP, she said, “Dhir saab’s family is fully behind him whatever he does in the political arena.”

My presence at this ceremony, along with my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, is itself a statement that we all are with him, she said.

As Manjit Dhir shared the limelight by standing next to her husband during interviews with TV reporters, her son helped the Speaker’s supporters from Jungpura constituency in distributing sweets.

Jagjit Singh Dhir, a bespectacled businessman, said BJP is not new to his father as he has saffron roots. “He was associated with the BJP for more than a decade,” he said.

His wife Harsh Prabhakar Dhir nodded. But would Jagjit or his wife ever fight an election if given a chance? “No way. One family member in politics is enough for all of us,” she said with a smile.