Meet Renu Bala, The First Woman MLA From Sadhaura In Haryana

Among the nine women who won the assembly elections in Haryana is Congress candidate Renu Bala from Sadhaura (SC) constituency. Bala's historic win is marked by the fact that she is the first female MLA from the constituency in its 42 years of history.

Talking about her landmark victory exclusively with SheThePeople.TV, Bala says, "I am extremely happy with the love and trust the people of Halka Sadhaura have shown towards me. I was 100 percent sure that I will win," further  adding, "It is a matter of pride and progress here that the people have chosen a woman MLA for the first time because they wanted to choose me."

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Bala tells us that while she joined the Congress party only six months ago in the presence of party state president Kumari Shelja, she had been elected as the chairperson of the Zila Parishad in 2016. She still has a few months left in that position. "I believe that it is the people who wanted to see a new face so they recommended my name to the high command. Everybody knows me here as I worked here as the chairperson," she says.

On being asked about the issues she wants to take up now that she has won the election, she evaded the topic by broadly saying that whatever is of prime importance to the constituency, she will work on that. After prying about it, she still did not name any issues specific to her constituency.

Talking about women's issues she said, "Women are not second to men in any aspect today. I will also raise the issues that affect women in my constituency."

Interestingly, while Bala joined Congress recently, her husband Rishi Pal followed suit while earlier he was the district president of the SC Morcha (BJP). Tribune India reported that Renu Bala and Rishi Pal have a good grip on voters in the Jagadhri, Yamunanagar and Sadhaura Assembly constituencies of Yamunanagar district. Both joined Congress during the Lok Sabha elections and helped Kumari Selja in contesting from Ambala which she eventually lost.

"I am extremely happy with the love and trust the people of Halka Sadhaura have shown towards me. I was 100% sure that I will win because the people and the Congress workers have shown immense faith in me. It is a matter of pride and progress here that the people have chosen a woman MLA for the first time because they wanted to choose me."

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Reportedly, it is an unexpected win for her as it was being said that out of all the four assembly seats in this area, BJP will undoubtedly win the Sadhaura seat. On the contrary, Bala didn't just win the seat against BJP's Balwant Singh, she won it with the biggest margin of votes in the history of Sadhaura assembly seat elections.

Bala won with a margin of 17020 votes against the three-time BJP candidate which in itself is another historic feat from Bala. While she got 65,687 votes, incumbent candidate Singh could only garner 48,710 votes. Prior to Bala, only one woman has been in the run for becoming an MLA from Sadhaura, Pinky Chhapper of Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) in 2014 who got 49,626 votes but she lost to Singh who got 63,772 in the last election. Besides 2014, Singh was also elected as Sadhaura MLA in 2005 and 2000.

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