Tripura’s lone female Christian candidate in the fray: Dipti Halam

This Lok Sabha election, Tripura state’s two constituencies Tripura East and Tripura West witnessed three women candidates out of the total of 23 candidates. While two of these female candidates are fielded by BJP—Pratima Bhoumik from Tripura West and Rebati Tripura from Tripura East, one candidate—Dipti Halam—contested with the ticket of a regional party called All India People Congress.

Resident of Bagbassa, Dharmanagar in North Tripura, Halam is from the tribal community, follows Christianity and lives with her husband and six children. Speaking to SheThePeople.TV,  she said, “I see so much unemployment in my state. There are no jobs for our men and women and that’s why there is a lot of poverty. I want to bring a change to this scenario and that’s why I accepted the ticket when the party came to me.”

Halam has studied till eighth standard but she took great interest in politics since her formative year. She worked at the grassroot level with Congress party for several years as a m

Dipti Halam (pic by Dipti Halam)

ember. “However I did not see a growth there. The party did not do anything for the people here. While it was present in the state, it hasn’t done much good work to prove its worth here. Then I left the part and AIPC showed confidence in me so I moved there,” she claimed.

While Halam’s husband is a farmer, she is a housewife who also claims to show interest in social work. She said that she tries to help people as much as she can. “If I become an MP, which I have a feeling that I will win the election, I can do so much more for the youth by opening the job market for them here in Tripura. I would like to bring bigger corporates to Tripura so both men and women can find work,” Halam added.

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Talking about her expectation from politics being called a “dirty game” she said that it is not a dirty game. “Something that allows a person to do welfare work in a much larger scale cannot be dirty. However, I will say this that men have made politics very dirty. It is a very good platform and there must be more women in parliament for it to not be as corrupt as it is today.

Actually, people find personal gain from politics, which is when it becomes wrong but I am not like that. Even today when people come to my house in the village, I feed everyone equally. I want to do good with my politics,” said the 42-year-old Halam.

If I become an MP, which I have a feeling that I will win the election, I can do so much more for the youth by opening the job market for them here in Tripura. I would like to bring bigger corporates to Tripura so both men and women can find work

She does not believe that her minority status has affected her brand of politics at all and says that at least in North-East, her faith doers not impact her in any way.

About the lack of women in politics, Halam says that the time has come for more women to join politics, she refers to Jhansi ki Raani “Lakshmibai” and says that she too ran a kingdom a very long time back “but women have been lost from politics for a long time now”. “I see a need for more women to come up. I feel that both men and women are equal so women should seek an opportunity in politics just like men do,” added Halam.

Tripura's voter list consisted of 26,05,325 voters, including 12,85,618 women and over 69,000 first time voters have enrolled in this Lok Sabha elections.

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