Click to play videoTezpur: Lakshmi Orang is the Assam United Democratic Front's (AUDF) candidate for MP from Tezpur. Young and confident, she speaks to dozens of voters everyday, telling them what she stands for. But almost everyone Lakshmi meets already knows who she is.
In November 2007, when Lakshmi was protesting for Adivasis to be recognised as Scheduled Tribes in Guwahati, she was stripped, brutally beaten and made to run for her life. Her trauma made her a symbol for Adivasi rights and today, she wants to fight for those rights as a politician.
“I know there is a bad side to politics and there is a good side,” says Lakshmi, who is up against the might of lottery baron and three-time Congress MP Mani Kumar Subba. And it's a battle she says she is determined to win.
It has taken a lot of courage on Lakshmi's part to come out, meet people and ask for votes and it's this courage that all political parties were desperate to exploit.
"Everyone offered me money. Congress wanted to buy me out. Twice they sent appointment letters and cheques of Rs 1 lakh. I did not take it. My respect is above it. The BJP also approached me,” Lakshmi reveals.
Meanwhile, perfume baron and AUDF President Badaruddin Ajmal thinks Lakshmi's ticket is beyond politics.
"We have given ticket to her on emotional grounds. Gone much above politics,” says Ajmal.
But Lakshmi tries to convince Adivasis in Tezpur's tea gardens that she will be their voice in Parliament, she, too, speaks the language of General Elections 2009.
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