By our staff reporter
Dehradun, 6 Jun: Every time she contests the Lok Sabha election from the prestigious Tehri seat in Uttarakhand, the profile of veteran BJP leader Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah goes up.
Shah, a former Tehri royal, has added one more feather in her cap (read crown) by becoming the first politician to win a Lok Sabha seat four times in Uttarakhand. For mer Union Minister Ajay Tamta (BJP) is behind Shah as he has won the Almora seat three times, now.
Before Shah, her father-in-law Maharaja Manbendra Shah, the last king of the Tehri kingdom, won this seat eight times but he could win the constituency only once in 2004 after the inception of the hill state in 2000. He died when he was the MP from Tehri.
“The credit of my fourth victory from Tehri must go to the people, my party workers, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Prime Minister Modi and other top leaders,” said Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah.
Significantly, Shah is the first and the only woman who has entered the Lok Sabha from Uttarakhand.
Shah started her political career in 2012 when the BJP high command fielded her in the 2012 byelections to face former Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna’s son Saket. Thereafter, the Maharani never looked back. She has continued to win from Tehri seat consecutively since then.
As she belongs to the erstwhile Tehri royal family, Shah’s family assets are worth Rs 206.9 crore.
Shah, who was born on 23 August, 1950, at the Thapathali Durbar, Kathmandu in Nepal, married Manujendra Shah, son of Manbendra Shah, in 1973. She has a daughter, Ksheerja. Mala has done her intermediate and studied in Convent of Jesus and Mar y, Pune, and Ratna Rajya Laxmi College, Kathmandu.
