Kalavati Bandurkar, the enigmatic farm widow of Vidarbha, today finally filed her nomination as Swatantra Bharat Paksha (SBP) candidate in Wani, amid rumours that she wouldn’t. Even after she did, her daughter Anita said she would withdraw before the last date.

Even as reports did the rounds that Kalavati had chest pain and wouldn’t contest, she appeared before the returning officer around noon to file her papers. She was accompanied by her political mentor, Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, a socio-political outfit operating from Pandharkawada town in Yavatmal district and claiming to champion the farmers’ cause. Just in case the Kalavati experiment does not work, Tiwari had brought along another farm widow, Babitai Bais from Hivra village, to file papers.

Tiwari conceded Kalavati was under pressure to withdraw. “Yesterday evening she was given the Marathi translation of a letter by Sulabh International chief Bindeshwari Pathak advising her to stay away from politics. She was perturbed. Her sons-in-law are also pressuring her to withdraw. They seem to be doing it at the behest of the Congress. And in the last few days she has been mobbed for media interviews. All this has taken its toll. Yesterday, she was admitted to hospital where her ECG indicated a problem. She was taken to Yavatmal and now she is in her Jalka village,” Tiwari said.

“But I have told her she is free to withdraw,” he added.

Daughter Anita said she would just that. “My mother is tense. All of us in the family are against her contesting elections. Some people have given her wrong ideas about it and she has been misled. Now, she has realised that it’s not in our interest and we have decided to withdraw,” Anita said.

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