Family members help out with poll campaign

Election campaigning is getting to be a family affair for most politicians. Some of the top leaders are falling back on their family members, who are turning out to be good campaign managers.

Published on: Nov 26, 2003, 15:28:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Election campaigning is getting to be a family affair for most politicians. Some of the top leaders are falling back on their family members, who are turning out to be good campaign managers.

Congress candidate from Badli, Dharamvir Yadav, has got his wife and son to do the campaigning for him since Monday as he is unwell. Yadav, contesting his first election, is one of the richest candidates.

Yadav's family has no experience of campaigning. But they can be seen in the narrow streets of Badli constituency making speeches and seeking votes for Yadav. They are also deep into finalising the campaign strategy.

The campaign for Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who is busy campaigning all over the city, is being handled by sister Rama Dhawan. Her BJP rival Poonam Azad is banking on her experienced husband Kirti Azad to run the campaign for her in Gole Market. The biggest probem the Azads are facing is that almost the entire BJP unit has revolted against the party's decision to give her the ticket. With little help from the party, Kirti is running the show with help of his close friends.

Vimal Khurana runs the campaign for his father, BJP's star candidate Madan Lal Khurana, in Moti Nagar. His Congress rival Alka Lamba is managing the show with the help of a few youth Congress workers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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