She may not aspire to emulate all-powerful leader of Indian National Congress, Sonia Gandhi, but deputy Speaker Chitra Lekha Yadav hugged limelight by refusing the post of a cabinet minister.
Phones started ringing in the chamber of Deputy Speaker Yadav as soon as the state-run Radio Nepal announced Monday afternoon that she was awarded the plum post of Water Resources Ministry in the council of ministers headed by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. Yadav, however, declined the offer saying that she was happy with her present position.
Yadav would have been the second woman to get such important portfolio after Nepali Congress leader Shailaja Acharya who is currently in political wilderness. Deputy Speaker draws salary and benefits equivalent to that of a minister of state while a cabinet minister will have more clout and access to resources which he/she could (mis)use in future elections.
Addressing the first sitting of the reinstated House of Representatives on April 28 from the chair of the Speaker, Yadav said, “If we again fight for chair or position, people will not allow us to go scot free as in the past. Our behaviour and activities are being observed by the people minutely.”
Yadav, who led the mock parliament sessions organized in the capital valley during the pro-democracy movement over the last three years, aspired for the post of Speaker after Speaker Taranath Ranabhat resigned from the post last month. But she failed to get the support of the top leaders of the seven party alliance for the coveted post. UML lawmaker and former law minister, Subash Nemwang, was elected to the post of Speaker on May 13 unopposed.
“If those leaders did not believe me for the post of Speaker, how is it that they accepted me as a member of cabinet?” Yadav asked on Monday, in response to queries by the media personnel.
“My advocacy in favour of fair elections to the constituent assembly, restructuring of state, advocacy for inclusive democracy and institutionalization of achievement of the recent people’s movement will have wider scope while working within the legislature than sticking to the limited role of a minister,” she told Nepalnews on Tuesday. “Now, I feel at home in the legislature compared to executive.”
Belonging to the ethnic Yadav community from the Terai, Yadav was married off even when she was a child. Thanks to her family, she was allowed to continue her study in Kathmandu where her husband was also a student. She later returned to southern district of Siraha as a lecturer of Literature English. Immediately, she was active in helping destitute women and advocating for equal rights for the women at the grass roots level.
Yadav had joined student politics in the mid-eighties but did not have any idea that she would one day become a full time politician. It was only after she was elected to the parliament in 1999 as a Nepali Congress candidate from Siraha constituency no. 2 that her political journey began.
She was chosen as deputy Speaker of the House in the third parliament since 1990. Even in the middle of insurgency, she made sure to visit her constituency at least twice a year and mix up with local people. After the split in the Nepali Congress in 2002, she joined the breakaway NC (Democratic) party and was elected to the party’s central working committee last year.
Critics of Yadav within her party see her as an ambitious person who wants her share for taking part in pro-democracy movement while in office. Yadav refutes such allegations. A Madhesi and woman, she has a distinct identity. “I am satisfied with whatever I am doing now. It is a matter of principle and I will continue to fight for equality for Nepali women in all spheres of public life,” she told us.
That means she will have to prepare herself for more ups and downs in the male-dominated Nepali society and political establishment.