A recipe for victory: Bithika Dev

Silchar, March 26: As the Congress candidate for the prestigious and sprawling Silchar Assembly constituency in south Assam, Bithika Dev has her task cut out.

But as the wife of Union minister Sontosh Mohan Dev, it is a matter of confidence ? a challenge to prove her detractors wrong.

As the chairperson of the Silchar Municipal Board ? and more importantly, as the daughter-in-law of a family of politicians ? Bithika knows what it takes to stay afloat in the cut-throat world of politics.

Her baptism in the ritual of politics was done at her father-in-law?s home immediately after her wedding.

She had married Sontosh Mohan Dev, Union minister for heavy industries, when he returned to India after completing a business management course in England.

It was her father-in-law, Satindra Mohan Dev, a former minister of Assam, who encouraged Bithika to take up social work alongside her domestic duties.

?That was the beginning of my public life, which further blossomed in the form of various other aspects of social work in New Delhi,? she said. Her husband?s election to the Lok Sabha as a Congress MP from his home turf of Silchar took Bithika to Delhi.

She said her first port of call in New Delhi was the Bipin Pal Charitable Trust under the Srihatta Sammelani. That, she added, had been her springboard to expand her area of social welfare activities.

During her 11-year stint as president of the trust, she had her hands full.

Her political career won its first laurel in early 2002, when she was elected chairperson of the Silchar Municipal Board, and her bandwagon has been on a roll since. Her nomination this time as the Congress candidate from Silchar, comprising nearly two lakh voters, thus raised no eyebrows.

Bithika is pitted against formidable BJP rival Bimalangshu Roy, who had romped home from the Silchar Assembly seat for two consecutive terms since 1996.

Bithika claims to have stabilised the finances of the Silchar municipality by facilitating regular payment of salaries to the employees and refurbishing the town?s garbage disposal infrastruc-ture. Pools of accumulated water and piled up garbage in the town, however, do not entirely support her claim.

and residents may not accept her plea that fund constraints had come in the way.