Kunaria village, about 18 km from Bhuj district headquarters, has a population of around 4,000. For this unique panchayat, 10 to 21 year old girls of the village will contest the elections. This ‘girls only’ council will run parallel to the adult village version, but only address issues related to adolescent girls and women in the village.
There is also a tough fight in the elections to be held on Monday for the girl child panchayat. Rallies, door-to-door campaigns have intensified in the entire village, while the voter gathering has become the center of attraction for the last one week. The result will be declared on the same day.
Eight candidates are in the fray for the post of sarpanch, out of which four have withdrawn their candidature. The contest will be between Bharti Garwa (20), Rubina Node (19), Trushali Suthar (20) and Afsana Sumra (17) and each candidate is busy explaining to 450 voters in the village why they should be brought to power.
The village sarpanch, Suresh Changa told TOI, “The concept is that these selected girls will bring out schemes that will address the issues of girls and women in the village. The second idea is to prepare women leaders of the future.”
Changa elaborated that while women enjoy 50 per cent reservation in panchayats, the decisions of elected women often fall heavily on their husbands. He said that as long as these girls can contest genuine elections, they will understand their constitutional rights and responsibility and will not allow others to take decisions on their behalf.
Bharti Garwa, one of the candidates for the post of Sarpanch, is pursuing her graduation. “The other candidates are my friends and we are only learning the democratic process. If I win, I want to make sure that the women stay healthy both physically and mentally. They should get nutritious food and take advantage of education at least till graduation. I want to focus on reducing the dropout ratio of girls,” she said.
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