BJP: Rekha Patra: BJP’s surprise face in Bengal is also symbol of party’s strongest poll pitch

A hitherto unknown face from an otherwise obscure hamlet in the Sunderbans delta of West Bengal is suddenly under the state’s election spotlight as an “embodiment of the BJP‘s fight against atrocities on women under Mamata Banerjee‘s TMC dispensation”. Thirty-something Rekha Patra, a housewife from the troubled region of Sandeshkhali and an alleged torture victim in the hands of arrested TMC leader Shajahan Sheikh and his cohorts, walked protest rallies against her oppressors carrying her girl child on her waist alongside scores of other women agitators from the region when local agitation against TMC leaders recently blew up.

Patra is now the BJP’s Lok Sabha nominee from Basirhat, a TMC stronghold on the southern-most fringes of North 24 Parganas district, and is the sole candidate of her party so far to have received a personal telephone call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who talked to her about her campaign preparations and was lauded by the leader as “Shakti Swarupa” (an embodiment of the essence of Shakti).

She is also the party’s surprise candidate through whom the BJP is trying to make its strongest political statement in Bengal: that it plans to steal the issue of women’s safety from under the sails of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress for the upcoming polls.

Among the most vocal Sandeshkhali protestors, it was based on Patra’s complaint that Bengal police arrested Shibaprasad Hazra, a local muscleman and Sheikh’s associate.

Patra is also believed to have been part of the group that met Modi on the sidelines of his public meeting in Barasat on March 6 and related the plight of Sandeshkhali women to the PM.

“I have no words to describe how I feel,” Patra told reporters here following her conversation with Modi on Tuesday. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be chosen for this task. If I get elected, I would do all that is required to ensure that women of Basirhat do not suffer the trauma we underwent in Sandeshkhali,” the political greenhorn said. Patra is the wife of a migrant worker in Tamil Nadu. She also promised to work towards creating job opportunities in Bengal and put effective brakes on population migration in search of work.

“I will also ensure that farmlands, forcefully snatched away from our brothers, are returned to them so that they can cultivate their land according to their choice,” she added.

Ecstatic about her conversation with the Prime Minister, Patra told Modi that she felt good and reassured that he was standing by her and others at the receiving end of “Trinamool torture”.

“It feels like Ram ji is standing with us,” she told the leader during her conversation.

Interestingly, Patra seems to have already earned the trust of her “dissenters” in Sandeshkhali who protested her candidature only a day ago by putting up posters stating their disapproval.

“It was a mistake on our part. We were swayed by some local TMC workers who misled us into putting up the protest. We are sorry for what we did and pledge to stand by you in the upcoming polls,” a woman was heard stating in a video circulating in social media circles on Tuesday whose authenticity PTI could not ascertain.

“It was a misunderstanding that has now been sorted. These women acted under TMC pressure and have now realised their mistake. They are with us. We will fight for all women of Sandeshkhali and we are ready to give a befitting reply to the TMC,” the BJP’s Basirhat candidate declared.