Kalavati, the widow of a farmer in Vidarbha who shot into limelight after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi mentioned her name in Parliament, is unlikely to file her nomination for the Maharashtra Assembly polls as an opposition party candidate as she has been hospitalised.
“We will wait. If her medical condition does not permit her to contest, we will replace her nomination,” Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti leader Kishore Tiwari on whose ticket she was to stand for the elections said.
Friday is the last date for filing nomination papers for the October 13 Maharashtra Assembly polls.
48-year-old “Kalavati Bandurkar complained of chest pain and was admitted to the hospital at Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district of Vidarbha,” a Third Front leader said, adding she is under constant medical supervision.
She was scheduled to contest the polls from Wani Assembly Constituency in Yavatmal district but in a recent interview to a leading Marathi newspaper she had said that she was being “pressurised to contest elections and that she was unaware of what election and politics were.”
“I do not want to contest the elections,” she had told the newspaper alleging that workers of the VJS, a NGO, had made her announce before the TV cameras that she would contest the Assembly elections.
After Rahul Gandhi mentioned Kalavati in Parliament last year, Sulabh International had committed to deposit Rs 30 lakh in the widow’s bank account.
Bindeshwar Pathak, Founder of Sulabh International had asked Kalawati to “refrain from joining politics” and render social service.
Her decision to join a political party will have “socially undesirable fallout” of people losing faith in acts of benevolence for the needy, Mr. Pathak had said.
