Meet Hemlata Patel of the Gulabi Gang, now a Congress candidate

Hemlata Patel of the Gulabi Gang fame is contesting the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections on a Congress ticket from Ayah Shah seat of Fatehpur district. A resident of Chillapar in Banda, her story is an example of the girl who can fight for her as well as other women’s rights.

Patel got married at the age of 16. First, she became the village Pradhan in 2010. Later, along with Sampatpal of Chitrakoot, she the formed Gulabi Gang which brought a revolution among the women of Bundelkhand.

She is currently running an organisation under the name Gulabi Gang Democratic. There are thousands of women volunteers in the Gulabi Gang who wear only pink saris and carry sticks. She raises a strong voice against women’s oppression at the local level.

The popularity of Gulabi Gang is such that films have been made on it in many places in the country and abroad. Hemlata Patel says that when Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra met her and asked her to get her a pink sari too was the best moment of her life!

She is also the District President of Fatehpur Mahila Congress. In the recent assembly elections, Congress has fielded her from the Ayah Shah assembly seat. Patel says she wants to give direct power to women as their representative and thus she is contesting the assembly elections. If she wins, she will fight against injustice more vigorously. She says that she is not against men but her priority is to protect women's interests. Hemlata Patel is the symbol of Congress party’s ‘Ladki Hoon, Lad Sakti Hoon' campaign.

The Ayah Shah assembly from where Patel is contesting, the Samajwadi Party has fielded its Rajya Sabha MP Vishambhar Prasad Nishad. The SP has put a dent in the OBC vote bank of the BJP by fielding a Nishad face. With the arrival of Vishambhar Nishad, the equations of this seat have changed. The BJP is fighting the former minister Ayodhya Prasad Pal here. Hemlata Patel has made the election triangular.

Hemlata did a remarkable work as village Pradhan by building a girls' inter-college in the village and also got a model school ready. She says that there was no girls school in her village and the families were afraid to send their girls to schools in other villages. Hemlata says that building an inter-college is out of the purview of a village head, yet she did it.

Patel got a lot of popularity from the famous Sheelu murder case of Banda, which also became a reason for the defeat of BSP in 2012.

In the Gulabi Gang, women are taught self-defense which is called Pink Self Defense Initiative. Gulabi Panchayat has been convened under the Gulabi Gang democratic, in which women used to bring their own grievances and a solution to that grievance was also found. Apart from this, all the problems of women are resolved.

Hemlata Patel is also making the women of the village self-reliant by giving employment through the Pink Women Self Help Group. Hemlata says that during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, she had also raised the issue of 50% reservation for women in Panchayat elections.

Praising Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi, Patel says that her life changed a lot when Priyanka Gandhi became the in-charge of Uttar Pradesh. “She was very impressed by my social service and activism on women's issues and she invited me to Lucknow. Here Priyanka Gandhi ji asked me to join the Congress party which was an honour for me,” Patel recalls.

Sunita Verma, a member of the Gulabi gang, says that “Didi” has taught her to fight for her rights, she gives us a lot of courage and energy. Sudha Patel, a woman from Hemlata's organization, says that "the schools in the village today are all due to the hard work of Didi, our children today go to the school in the village, earlier they had to go to the school built in another village".

Shehnaaz, another woman from Hemlata's village, says, “We are not so educated, Hemlata didi has got our work done from pension to making ration card.”

Hemlata Patel believes the woman must be strong, only then a family will be strong.