Rekha Patra, the face of the Sandeshkhali movement and the BJP's candidate for West Bengal's Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency, has received a motivational call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who termed her a "Shakti Swaroopa".
Apart from motivating her, the Prime Minister spoke to her about campaign preparedness and assured her of full support from the party leadership.
In the conversation, an audio clip of which has gone viral, Patra said that initially after her name was announced in the BJP list, some posters against her were put up in the constituency, allegedly by local Trinamool Congress activists.
However, she told him that local women, some of whom are politically affiliated with the Trinamool, apologised to her and admitted they did that out of pressure from the ruling party leadership.
During the conversation, the Prime Minister also advised Patra on the line of campaigning to be adopted in the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency, which spans seven Assembly segments including Sandeshkhali.
PM Modi was heard advising her that besides highlighting the tales of harassment faced by the women of Sandeshkhali from the hands of a section of the local Trinamool leaders, she should also focus on how the state government and the ruling party made rampant corruption in the implementation of centrally sponsored projects in West Bengal.
She should also highlight how the state government tried to pass off Central projects as the state’s own projects, he said.
A resident of the Patrapara area in Sandeshkhali, Patra, before being named the BJP candidate, was living the life of an ordinary woman in a rural hamlet of West Bengal with hardly any connection with politics. However, she became a national name recently as she was leading the protesting women at Sandeshkhali against the alleged sexual violence against them for so many years by some local Trinamool leaders.
(Except for the headline, this story, from a syndicated feed, has not been edited by Odishatv.in staff)