Independent, but with ?key? factor!
THOUGH BAHUJAN Samaj Party (BSP) has abstained from civic elections, candidates supported by it are in the fray for the Mayoral post. ?No doubt the high-command has prevented us from using the party symbol and images, but the workers of the party are all out campaigning,? claims an independent mayoral candidate Shiv Kumar Gupta.
THOUGH BAHUJAN Samaj Party (BSP) has abstained from civic elections, candidates supported by it are in the fray for the Mayoral post.
“No doubt the high-command has prevented us from using the party symbol and images, but the workers of the party are all out campaigning,” claims an independent mayoral candidate Shiv Kumar Gupta.
Gupta is fighting elections for the first time, and is banking on the trader-community for votes. “The traders are with the lock and key,” he claims and adds, “I have been given the lock and key right from the day one.” He further says that the BSP workers including those at the district-level have come out in the open in his support. “They are campaigning round the clock to ensure my victory,” says Gupta.
Gupta has been holding a number of sabhas, apart from tru-dging door-to-door asking for votes. “But that has not deterred me,” he says and adds that there has been candidates who have been contesting for the last two elections, but its pathetic that they had not even visited their voters even once after they had lost in the first elections. He was making an oblique reference to Madhu Gupta, the SP candidate in the fray.
Taking a dig at the other contestants, he says he is a grass-root level worker of the BSP, and the people have realised this. Pointing at the Congress and the BJP candidate, he says that the mayoral candidates were high-fi and they were not for the downtrodden.
About his effort to provide an infrastructure in the municipal schools and the public health centres, Gupta states that they were need of the hour as majority of the poor visit these centres. “It’s pathetic that the facilities at the centres were substandard,” he laments.
