200 days of Modi govt: First-time BJP MP Raksha Khadse believes in getting the job done quietly

Raksha Khadse gets to spend nowhere near as much time with her daughter, Krishika, 7, and son Gurunath, 3, as she did till before the Lok Sabha election. But she knew that was a given if she won the election on a BJP ticket in Raver in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. Win she did, and quite convincingly at that, garnering more than twice as many votes as the runner-up.

She says she does not mind the reduced attention to her kids. “It’s a job where I can address people’s problems directly. When I first stepped into Parliament, it was such a great feeling to know I’m at the place where the country’s decisions are taken,” explains the daughter-in-law of Maharashtra’s revenue minister Eknath Khadse.




A 27-year-old Computer Science graduate from a farming family, she married Khadse’s son, Nikhil, in 2006 and fought her first election, for the local gram panchayat, in 2010. After Nikhil committed suicide last year, she was tasked with carrying forward her family’s political legacy.

She knew it was a big responsibility and that she had to get cracking from the moment she won the Lok Sabha election. “If I start now, I will have achieved at least some of what I hope to by 2019,” adds Khadse, who has asked the defence ministry for the ordnance factories in her district to be expanded in line with prime minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign.

She says the government has wasted no time in acting on its objectives, citing Modi’s multiple trips abroad in his first six months to bolster its foreign policy.

The government’s promptness has benefited her constituency too, with the water resources ministry releasing the first installment of Rs 66 crore, out of a package of Rs 500 crore, for a delayed irrigation project.

Raksha, by her own admission, is not one to take part in the shouting matches in Parliament. She would much rather just get the job done quietly without taking her eye off the ball.