Meet BJP’s Navya Haridas, the ‘accidental politician’ taking on Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad

Navya, 39, is currently a councillor in the Kozhikode municipal corporation and the state general secretary of the BJP’s mahila morcha or women’s wing.

An engineering graduate, Navya’s entry into politics was also accidental. After obtaining her BTech degree, Navya worked with HSBC Bank as a software professional for two-and-a-half years. In 2009, she married marine engineer Shobin Shyam and moved to Singapore, where she continued to work at various software firms.

Her family was associated with the Sangh Parivar, and Navya says she grew up seeing RSS meetings being held at her family home in Kozhikode. She also recalls taking part in RSS student activities. But politics was nowhere in the picture, says Navya.

Then, in 2015, during a short trip to Kozhikode, she witnessed the local body elections in Kerala. And that changed everything. “I had returned to Kozhikode for a short vacation with my children. It was election time, and the BJP approached me with a ticket, considering my family’s Sangh Parivar background. I was fielded from the general seat in the corporation. Overnight, I became the candidate. My plan was to return to Singapore if I had lost.”

But Navya never ended up going back to her corporate life. She became a councillor in 2015 and retained her seat again in 2020.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, she took the big political plunge and was fielded as the BJP candidate from the Kozhikode South seat. She lost the seat to Indian National League candidate Ahamed Devarkovil, but ended up increasing the BJP vote share from 16.56% in the 2016 Assembly polls to 20.89% in the 2021 polls.

Navya will now face the biggest political battle of her career, in a seat that will have the spotlight on it because of the Gandhis’ close association to it.

Wayanad and Rae Bareli were the two seats Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi contested in the recent Lok Sabha polls. He retained the latter, necessitating a bypoll in Wayanad. His sister Priyanka will now make her electoral debut from the seat — increasing the stakes for the Congress in the state.

Navya says she is unfazed by the “profile of rival candidates” in Wayanad. “Priyanka Gandhi’s acceptance is only because of her links with the Nehru family. Rahul Gandhi had breached a promise to the people of Wayanad. He abandoned the constituency only to pave the way for his sister. No other local Congress leaders were considered for Wayanad. They (the Gandhi family) are using Wayanad to increase the dominance of their family in politics,’’ says Navya.

She adds that her “educational background” as well as “the acceptance she gained as a representative of the Kozhikode corporation” will help her reach out to people.

Navya, who has kicked off her campaign, says one of the main talking points for her is the crisis being faced by Wayanad in the health and agrarian sectors. “The people of Wayanad do not have enough health facilities. A government medical college exists only in name. The landslide on July 30 exposed how ecologically fragile Wayanad is… The farming community is in a crisis due to the frequent raids by wild animals… These are the problems we are facing,” she says.