Ms Raina will contest from Rajpora Assembly constituency in Pulwama.
Srinagar:
An election that will be a first in Jammu and Kashmir is expected to see another Kashmiri Pandit woman contesting the assembly elections for the first time in three decades. Daisy Raina, who worked in a private firm in Delhi and was the sarpanch of Frisal village in Pulwama, is the only candidate fielded by the Republican Party of India (Athawale), the BJP’s ally in the NDA alliance.
Ms Raina, who will contest from Rajpora Assembly constituency in Pulwama and is one of only nine women contesting the Jammu and Kashmir elections, said she decided to take the plunge because she was forced to by the youth, who wanted her to be their voice.
“The youth forced me to come forward and asked me to ensure that their voice reaches the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. I was working here as a sarpanch and at the same time I was meeting youth, listening to them and trying to understand their problems. Our youth are suffering without being guilty of anything. The youth born in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s have seen nothing but bullets,” Ms Raina told NDTV in Hindi.
Ramdas Athawale had recently visited the Union Territory and said that statehood should be restored, and when Ms Raina was asked if that was when it was decided that she would contest the Assembly elections, she replied in the negative.
“I had not even thought of contesting elections. The youth asked me to become chief minister for a day, saying I can fix Pulwama,” she said.
Apart from other problems faced by the residents, Pulwama is a hotbed of terrorists and the site of the 2019 attack in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed. Asked if she thought Pulwama had a bad reputation, the Republican Party of India (Athawale) leader said: “I don’t think so. The work is progressing well. All my work is done… If there is a problem, it is we who have created it.”
Ms Raina stressed that she had not faced any difficulties even though few people from her community lived in the area.
“When I came here for work, I used to move around Pulwama without any security. I didn’t have a personal security officer (PSO). Some people had PSOs, but I didn’t. I worked here for years and even started a Shivling in Pulwama. The Muslims asked me to do it because I had built a wazukhana (ablution tank) and done many other things for them. They said the Hindus would get angry if I didn’t do something for this community too,” she said.
Ms Raina worked in New Delhi and was later elected unopposed as sarpanch in 2020.
Jammu and Kashmir will see its first elections in nearly a decade and its first as a Union Territory after being stripped of its special status under Article 370 in 2019. Voting for the 90 seats in the UT will be held in three phases between September 18 and October 1. The counting of votes will take place on October 8.