A Sympathy wave catapulted her into the Lok Sabha in 1999 from the Mahendragarh parliamentary seat. But sympathy is not what she is banking on this time. For Dr Sudha Yadav, the transition from a ‘‘Kargil-martyr’s widow’’ to a full-fledged politician has been a rather swift one. And unlike last time, it is the politician in her that is doing all the talking now.‘‘It is a foregone conclusion as to who would win from here,’’ she tells you with a glint in her eye. ‘‘Of course, I cannot say what the margin of victory would be but there is nothing stopping my re-election,’’ says Yadav. Contesting on a BJP ticket, Yadav, the complete outsider had defeated a seasoned politician like Rao Inderjeet Singh of the Congress by a margin of over 1.39 lakh votes in the 1999 elections. The victory had been largely attributed to the sympathy wave that had been generated following the martyrdom of her husband BSF Deputy Commandant Sukhbir Singh Yadav in the Kargil conflict.‘‘If it was not for Advaniji, I would have never entered politics,’’ says Yadav narrating how a meeting with the then Home Minister in the Kargil aftermath left her thoroughly impressed. ‘‘I later found out that the admiration was mutual and that the BJP wanted me to contest an election,’’ says this Ph.D in Chemistry who was teaching in a school at that time. ‘‘I remember telling the then Haryana incharge Narendra Modi that I don’t know a thing about a politics and that I had no money to pool in. He told me to just take the plunge and the party will take care of the rest,’’ she adds. And the rest, as they say, is history.Even as she candidly admits that she won the last election riding a sympathy wave, Sudha Yadav is quick to add that this time round she is letting her work do the talking. ‘‘My work is for all to see. I am the first MP from this constituency to have utilised all the funds I got,’’ she says. ‘‘Not just that, I was able to release money which had remained unutilised during the tenure of my predecessor. In all, I have spent Rs 11.87 crores on my constituency,’’ says Yadav. This is one figure Yadav makes a point to mention at all her election rallies. Then, she goes on to elaborate the major tasks she got accomplished during her tenure— sanctioning of Rs 60 crores for rain-water harvesting in South Haryana and sanctioning of two railway overbridges in Rewari topping the list.Ask her about what she considers to be her plus-points and she is quick to reply: ‘‘Close contact with the people of my constituency and implementation of all Central Government Schemes.’’ However, the politician in Yadav doesn’t let her sit quiet when it comes to the Om Prakash Chautala led Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) government in Haryana. ‘‘I never got any co-operation from the state government even when we had an alliance with INLD,’’ alleges Yadav. Then she goes on to narrate how Chautala thwarted her attempts to get a Sainik School and a Medical College opened. ‘‘Just for the sake of getting credit, the Haryana chief minister laid down the foundation stones for the railway overbridges in Rewari.The very mention of South Haryana gets her all worked up. ‘‘Successive state government have neglected this area following the divisive caste-politics. There have been times when Congress has had 4-5 ministers in the same cabinet from this area still the development, or the lack of it, is for everybody to see,’’ she lashes out.‘‘I was the first MP who actually went to the interiors of my constituency. Women used to touch me and say that they wanted to feel what an MP felt like. They used to tell me that they had never seen any of their previous MPs,’’ claims Yadav. ‘‘I worked when my rivals were busy in drawing-room politics,’’ she says. Clearly, the outsider seems to have come of age.
