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Among the more than 2,500 candidates fighting the Karnataka Assembly elections, Ramakka from the Kampli Assembly constituency is the only transgender. The 56-year-old says she has filed her nomination hoping to bring change in the lives of transgenders and the physically and mentally challenged.
“All my life, I have been begging like many of other transgenders. No government has done anything as the population of transgenders in the state is minimal. I am hoping to bring change to their lives. I thought politics would be the right platform to do it,” she says.
A total of 2, 615 candidates, including 2,429 male and 185 female are in the fray in the Assembly elections, scheduled to be held on May 10.
Ramakka is contesting as a Desh Prem Party candidate. “The party got registered with the Election Commission of India recently and I filed my nominations,” she says.
“I was born into a poor family that lived in a village in Ballari district. At the age of 14 years, I transformed into a girl and started serving Huligemma and my name also changed from Ramaswami to Ramakka. I have spent all my life begging and also performing Jogathi dance, a folk dance form. I want to educate the transgender community,” she adds.
Ramakka, who never went to school, says that she was sent by the family to “serve” Huligemma, a local deity at the temple located in Munirabad of north Karnataka. She has declared Rs 30,000 in cash and gold ornaments worth Rs 6.7 lakh.
“I am already 56 years old and there are a lot of transgenders begging on the streets. Their lives are in miserable condition. I hope to change their lives. There are about 25 transgenders in the Kampli Assembly constituency and we are conducting door-to-door campaigns,” Ramakka says.
In the 2018 Assembly elections, Congress candidate J N Ganesh won the Kampli seat, reserved for Scheduled Tribes, defeating BJP’s T H Suresh Babu.
