Born to freedom fighter couple Sarla Sharma and Paras Ram, Viplove Thakur’s career as a woman politician was one of continuous struggle. Yet she defied all odds and carved out her path to rise as a woman legislator thrice. She was a minister in the Himachal Pradesh government and later a two-time Rajya Sabha member, besides being the state Congress president—a legacy that her mother had created as one of the women legislators in the 50s and 60s – when Himachal Pradesh had been part of Punjab.
“My political grooming had started in the early days of childhood with two parents involved in the freedom movement. My mother was even jailed as she was active in various areas assigned to her by the Congress during the freedom struggle and part of the Quit India Movement in 1942,” she says. This also helped her grow as a person with independent thoughts and clear ideas as to what she wanted to do in life, she says.
There was huge resistance within the party to give her ticket for the state assembly in 1985 when she first got elected as a lawmaker and twice thereafter too. Thakur was mentored by a veteran Congress leader from Kangra, Sat Mahajan. While this proved to be of great backing, Mahajan being a known Virbhadra Singh baiter, also became one of her stumbling blocks. By then, Thakur had struck a good chord with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and later Sonia Gandhi as a woman from the freedom fighters’ family.
In 1995-98, he was inducted as minister of State (Independent charge) for Ayurveda and the Indian System of Medicines. Later in August 2003, she was made Chairperson of the State Commission for Women—a statutory body dealing with issues related to women’s rights violations. The commission under her also played a crucial role in investigating and resolving issues of gender discrimination, women harassment, violence, and other injustices faced by women.
A post-graduate from Punjab University, Thakur never compromised with her values and upheld the ethics of politics much to the displeasure of powerful politicians like Virbhadra Singh. She though was considered close to his rivals including pt Sukh Ram and Anand Sharma—both former union ministers.
