With elections around the corner, political parties and their candidates are looking for various media to carry out their propaganda.
And social media is definitely one of them. But a Left party functionary in north Chennai seems to swear by an old method — writing on the blackboard.
This party worker, who has been writing on the civic needs of north Chennai on the board, has taken the plunge into election campaigning.
For the past few weeks, he has been writing on the blackboard, asking city residents to vote for the party’s north Chennai candidate and not the Congress or BJP-led alliances in the State.
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Most smartphone users have apps that allow them to discover fine-dining restaurants.
But an SMS service from txtWeb provides users information on the nearest ‘Amma Unavagam’, the low-cost canteens where people can find a quick bite for as little as Rs. 2.
To find out the location of the nearest Amma Unavagam, users have to type ‘@ammas’ and send it to 51115.
They will then receive an SMS with the address of the nearest canteen. The SMS will cost the user a rupee.
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Recently, during the course of an interaction with voters, a sitting Member of Parliament noted in a matter of fact manner that politicians received commissions from contractors.
To a question on how funds for shelved projects were later spent, T.K.S. Elangovan, North Chennai MP and DMK’s candidate for South Chennai, replied the money was not released by the government agency.
When questioned further by the audience, if politicians received a ‘cut’ of the contract amount, Mr. Elangovan conceded politicians received commissions from contractors.
An Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) volunteer was quick to react that Mr. Elangovan had confessed to the contractor-politician nexus at a public platform.
To that, Mr. Elangovan said that recently AAP members had been suspended for selling party tickets for money.
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A simple search for the contact numbers of politicians during election time may sometimes be taxing. A call to the headquarters of a major political party turned problematic as they were reluctant to part with the candidate’s contact number.
Instead, a person at the party’s headquarters gave the candidate’s personal assistant’s mobile number, but it turned out to be wrong.
The candidate’s personal assistant was reached finally but not before several others were wrongly contacted. So much chaos because of a single wrong digit.
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Those flying from Delhi to Chennai, last week, got a mosquito for a baggage tag. Okay, not quite. The tag was a cut-out of a large mosquito feeding on a puddle of blood.
It was the WHO that went creative to promote this year’s theme for World Health Day on April 7 — prevent and control vector-borne diseases (protect yourself from malaria and dengue). Now, that’s a baggage tag that’s a keepsake.
