Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Admi Party (AAP) have caught the imagination of many, including those in Gujarat. The party has also attracted kite-makers. The January 14 kite festival is a huge public event in the State.
After the party’s huge victory in the Delhi assembly elections, it has been drawing members by the hundreds in Gujarat as well. AAP Gujarat convenor Sukhdev Patel told The Hindu that his party had enrolled as many as one lakh members during the last around a fortnight.
“We have launched an enrolment drive from January 1 with a target of getting some 13 lakh members. After this, we will review if we would contest all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, depending upon the kind of candidates we get,” Patel said.
With Uttarayan, the kite-flying festival just a week away — on January 14, Makara Sankranti — kite-makers of Gujarat are capitalising on the current political scenario. A kite-maker in Ahmedabad’s walled city area, Jamalpur Sameer Pathan, told The Hindu : “At first, we made small-sized kites with images of Mr. Kejriwal on them. It dawned upon us quickly that they were being bought to make a string of kites.’’
Mr. Pathan added that while the demand for kites with Narendra Modi’s images continued to sell, customers wanted kites with the images of both Mr. Kejriwal and Mr. Modi.
Yusuf Khan, who has been in the kite-making business for about 20 years, said “we have dozens of orders of kites with Mr. Kejriwal and Mr. Modi’s images but there are some who want only one of them.”
After the AAP’s huge victory in the Delhi Assembly elections, it has been drawing members by the hundreds in Gujarat as well. AAP Gujarat convenor Sukhdev Patel told The Hindu that his party had enrolled one lakh members in about a fortnight.
