Jamnagar: A woman Member of Parliaments suffered head injuries and bruises after falling into a sewage drain in Jamnagar, her constituency in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
The incident occurred on May 16 when Poonamben Maadam went to check a demolition drive in a slum of Jamnagar, Gujarat’s fifth largest city which is some 340 km west of the state capital of Gandhinagar.
A video clip showed Maadam talking to an official surrounded by people in the city’s Indira Marg. The 41-year-old parliamentarian was standing on a concrete crust covering a drain that cracked under her feet and making her fall into an eight-foot deep drain that joins the nearby Lakhoti lake. The drain remains mostly dry during summer.
The clip also showed some people trying to save her from falling in, but to no avail.
Madam contested 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Jamnagar seat as Bharatiya Janata Party candidate and she won. She was earlier a member of Gujarat Legislative Assembly from Khambhalia in Jamnagar district.
Her father was four-time independent legislator from Khambhalia during 1972-1990. She is married to a former defense officer Parminder Mahajan. She was based in Delhi until 2009, but later she settled in Khambhalia.
Madam hit headlines during a religious program in April 2015 at Veraval, the headquarters of Gir Somnath district. She was seen dancing in a crowd while crowds showered currency notes worth nearly 30 million rupees in merely 30 seconds.