Meet Chandrani Murmu. Just 25 years, 11 months and eight days old and she will soon step into Parliament setting history as the youngest member of the Lok Sabha. She contested on a Biju Janata Dal (BJD) ticket and won against two-time BJP MP Ananta Nayak by a difference of 66,203 votes. She is now elected to be the MP from Keonjhar Lok Sabha seat (reserved for Scheduled Tribes).
She completed her B Tech from the city-based SOA University in 2017. She was on the lookout for a job, when she stumbled upon this opportunity.
“I will learn something new every day as long as I am a politician and I want to keep my personality intact and not change to fit into a politician’s mould. I don’t want to get swayed by power and I never want to lose my originality that differentiates me from the rest,” she said, quoted by She The People.
It was through her uncle who is a party worker in BJD, that she found out the latter were looking for a candidate to represent the tribals in the area – and she felt she was best suited for the job.
Until now, the youngest MP has been Dushyant Chautala, founder of the Jannayak Janta Party, who became the Hisar Lok Sabha MP in 2014.
A Tough Fight
Murmu’s maternal grandfather, the late Harihar Soren, had contested on a Congress ticket and was elected as an MP of the Lok Sabha in 1980 and 1984. However, that is the only connection Murmu has with the world of politics.
Her campaigning days were not very easy. There was also an obscene video with a morphed image of Murmu that went viral on social media.
“Frankly speaking, I am not aware of the challenges I have to face being a people’s representative. My first priority will be to know the constituency and spend as much as time with the people,” she said, quoted The Hindu.
Despite her young age and not having prior experience in politics, she connected well with the people because of the way she spoke and her education qualifications.
Murmu’s To-Do List
Murmu has big plans. Her constituency is home to 20% of the country’s iron ore reserves, but when it comes to human development indices, it lags way behind. She wants to break down this tag and make the lives of the people better. She wants to set up a steel plant and establish a railway line as, currently, there are only two trains between Keonjhar and Bhubaneswar which run on a single railway line, reported She The People.
One of her main priorities is to also educate people, especially those in remote areas.
(With inputs from She The People, The Hindu)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)