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Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
A year after a eunuch was elected mayor of Uttar Pradesh, another member of the "third gender" has decided to run for office.
Payal, a 26-year-old eunuch who stands six feet tall, will be in the running in a constituency in state capital Lucknow when UP elects a new assembly in early 2002.
She has pitted her fortunes against the state's Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Lalji Tandon, who is responsible for nursing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's parliamentary constituency Lucknow.
Payal will be the official candidate of a new outfit called the Nationalist Communist Party, floated by a little known social worker with political ambitions. The Election Commission is yet to grant the party formal recognition.
Nevertheless, Payal has got down to mustering support by shooting off letters to her peers like Gorakhpur mayor Asha Devi and Shabnam Mausi, India's first eunuch legislator in Madhya Pradesh.
"I am confident that they will come down to Lucknow to extend their full support to my campaign," said Payal.
"I have taken the decision (to contest elections) only after consulting members of my clan, who number at least 2,500-odd in and around Lucknow," said Payal, who has studied up to middle school.
Asked what she was hoping to achieve through politics, she said: "My sole objective is to combat corruption at all levels in the government, for which today's politicians alone are responsible."
Virtually echoing the campaign spiel of Asha Devi and Shabnam Mausi, Payal said: "Unlike these politicians, whose sole objective is to fill their coffers, we eunuchs do not have families or children for whom we would crave to collect money.
"Therefore, surely, we are in a better position to serve the masses selflessly," she argued.
But why did she decide to take on a senior politician like Lalji Tandon?
"Well, my war is against corruption and I see that man as the epitome of the vice," she charged. "And then he is the key representative of the prime minister in Lucknow."
The young eunuch has equal contempt for other leading political lights of Uttar Pradesh, be it Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati or top members of the Congress.
"They are all one and the same. It is time for eunuchs to rise and teach all of them a lesson," asserted Payal.
Indo-Asian News Service
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