31-year old Sunita Parmar, a Hindu woman in Pakistan's Sindh province, will become the first from the minority community to contest the provincial assembly elections to be held on July 25.
Parmar is a member of the scheduled caste and from the Meghwar community. Scheduled castes are those lower Hindu castes protected by Pakistani law.
She will contest the election as an independent candidate for the Sindh Assembly constituency PS-56 from Tharparkar district – in the Thar Desert.
According to the 2017 census, Tharparkar has a population of 1.6 million. Half of those are Hindus, of which the majority – like Parmar belongs to the scheduled castes, at the bottom of the social class system.