A mother, housewife and Mayor

A novice in power politics, she has called upon the State Government to extend help to this youngest municipal corporation in the State. “We may be in opposition, politically, but prejudices should not hamper development,” she remarked in her first newspaper interview from the Mayor’s coach.

A dark horse in the race for the rare honour of becoming the first mayor of the town, Shalaja and her husband Laxman Navlai were in for a pleasant surprise when local Congress bosses cleared her name to don the mayoral robe. Obviously, the internal feuds among the Congress groups made it possible for her to emerge as the consensus candidate.

The mayorship has come against the background of a sharp resistance to amalgamation of three towns — Sangli, Miraj and Kupwad — all boasting of distinctly varied cultural background, to make a municipal corporation.

So it is certainly going to be a tightrope walk for Mrs Mayor: Facing the adversaries in her own party and those from the opposition benches. But she is determined to work it out. She thinks she can do it as she comes from a joint family.

Hailing from Nerli village in Belgaum district, she did her formal schooling in Kannada medium. Married to a trader-Congressman in 1991, she has always been at her husband’s side in all his socio-political ventures as a former councillor.

The mayorship has not changed Shailaja’s days so far. Except that there are some more meetings and public functions. A mother of three — six-year-old Rahul, three-year-old Priyanka and one-and-a-half-years-old Soniya — the Mayor is still more of a housewife and a mother.

Her entry in the civic corridors can be attributed to 30 per cent reservation for women in local self governing bodies. Her husband’s Chandni Chowk ward was reserved and she got the election ticket. She contested and won. Her husband rebelled after being denied a ticket, contested as an independent but lost.

Shailaja feels that balanced development of all the three towns, the issue of unauthorised constructions in gunthewari areas and an underground drainage network for the city carry equal weight in her programme.