Rising to the occasion
The Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded K. Naghadas, a differently-abled person, as its candidate for the Thyagaraja Nagar constituency in Chennai. A resident of Ashok Nagar, Mr. Naghadas says he is contesting because he thinks a person with disability needs to be elected to the Assembly.
He says he has noticed “a lot of sympathy” during his campaign, “but I am not sure if it will be transformed into votes.”
Mr. Naghadas had to climb two flights of stairs at the zonal office in Kodambakkam to file his nomination papers earlier this week. Undeterred by the lack of elevators or ramps, he used his crutches to climb up to the conference room. On his way down, he handed them over to a party worker and walked down without assistance.
Family feuds
While the legend of Krishna, born of the eighth womb, is being invoked by supporters as a call for the formation of the Eighth Left Front government in West Bengal, a CPI(M) candidate is engaged in a bitter contest against his maternal uncle, a figurative Kangsa.
Santanu Bora and his uncle Gurupada Mete — who are contesting on CPI(M) and Trinamool Congress tickets respectively — have not been on speaking terms for the last seven years. They are making their election debuts from the Indus seat in Bankura district, which goes to the poll on May 7.
The political divide is spilling over to the rest of the family as well. While Santanu's mother rates her son's chances of winning higher than those of her brother, his grandmother thinks it is more likely that her son Gurupada will emerge victorious.
Promising candidate
If you thought promises of freebies were the domain of the big political parties with a chance of coming to power, think again. An independent candidate in Kancheepuram constituency in Tamil Nadu has decided to join the freebie fray.
If elected, A.N. Radhakrishnan of the All India Party for the Protection of Civil Rights has promised that two M.B.B.S. seats would be given free to talented SC/ST, BC and MBC students living in the Kancheepuram Assembly segment, in the medical college run by an educational trust headed by him.
Further, he says, two B.D.S seats, five nursing course seats, and 15 engineering seats would be offered free to brilliant students from the above categories, in educational institutions run by the trust he heads.
His list of freebies does not stop here. If elected, families under the poverty line will receive free medical treatment at the medical college and hospital at Enathur. Pregnant women in the constituency will benefit as well, with his offer of Rs.5,000 if they give birth at the hospital.
Ballots, not bullets
In the past, they used bullets to disrupt the poll process. But in this Assembly poll, the leaders and cadres of various insurgent outfits — lodged in designated camps in different parts of Assam — will unleash the power of their franchise by voting through postal ballots.
The Election Commission, after consultation with the Centre, has notified that “ex-militants” whose names are in the electoral rolls of Assam are a “class of voters entitled to vote by postal ballot.”
There are 18 designated camps for a total of 4,006 cadres.
Contributed by Sujatha Raghunath, Ananya Dutta, V. Venkatasubramanian and Sushanta Talukdar
