By IANS
New Delhi : Rani and Sunita will always remember this International Women’s Day as the day they shared the dais with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Gulshan Kaur, wife of Prime Minster Manmohan Singh.
Rani Devi from Jhajhar in Rajasthan and Sunita from Rohtak in Haryana, both sarpanchs (village heads) of their villages, were at a function here Saturday to honour 15 women with Stree Shakti Puraskar.
Both women were seen smiling when Sonia mentioned their names in her address to the gathering drawn from different walks of life, mainly women activists and representatives of several NGOs.
Minister of State for Child and Women Development Renuka Chowdhury, whose ministry organised the event, said: “It is the empowerment of women taking place in the country. The constitution gives us equal rights, and we must fight for that.”
“I am very happy,” said Sunita, when asked to share her feelings, adding that it was a great honour to sit along with Sonia and the wife of the prime minister.