Chetna Yatra flagged off

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, December 4: Amidst loud cheering and slogan shouting, a 45-woman team, led by the former National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Mohini Giri, today left on a unique ten-day train trip, the Chetna Yatra. The trip begins from Delhi and moves on to Ernakulam and Chennai and then back, in a bid to raise awareness on women's issues. Top on the agenda of this awareness journey, undertaken by the Joint Action Front for Women, is to demand 33 per cent reservation for the women in the Parliament and state legislatures. Though the yatra was to be flagged off from the Nizamuddin Railway Station jointly by the Minister of Railways, Nitish Kumar; president of Mahila Dakshita Samiti, Suman Krishna Kant and chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board, Mridula Sinha, only Sinha was present to see the team off. Flagging off the Mangala Express carrying the all-woman team, Sinha said that the journey does not aim at ``only women's awareness, but social awareness on the whole''.

Giri, along with Ranjana Kumari, the general secretary of the Mahila Dakshita Samiti, stressed the need to free the country of gender bias and violence against women, besides demanding equal status for them. While boarding the train, Giri equated this yatra with Mahatma Gandhi's liberation movement and said that the present government was following the British policy of Divide and Rule by encouraging gender bias. The train is scheduled to stop at 18 stations, where it will be greeted by local women's groups, followed by a short awareness session and distribution of pamphlets, before proceeding further.

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