Today, Mumbai has witnessed new waves in politics. Aam Aadmi Party supporters, the police and some people of the city had a memorable time when Kejriwal came to the city. When he came out of the departure gate of Terminal 1A of the Mumbai domestic airport at 10.45 am, party supporters had formed a human chain to escort their leader into an auto. However, Kejriwal took a small bypass. Media people were running around for his glimpses, some wanted to click his photographs while electronicwalas were trying to get his byte. A few restless camerapersons and reporters also got into the autorickshaw reserved for him and had to be told to get down. Media was present in large numbers, so were his supporters, police personnel, party workers, all wanted to shake hands with their ‘Aam Aadmi’. On a working day, I never thought that in city like Mumbai, Kejriwal will ever have such response. No matter what people say about him but the ground reality is that Kejriwal is largely accepted and liked by common man of this country. Looking at his popularity, I think people will give him a chance to taste the power. A lot of Indians had pinned their hopes on this man. For me, Arvind was a good guy at Jantar Mantar, was a revolutionary but he is immature in Indian politics. Indians see him as one of the common man like them, who is setting new trends in politics. By seeing Kejriwal’s simplicity, many hearts moved in his favour.
Very neatly dressed up Kejriwal, took the three wheeler to the Andheri Railway Station and kept telling the auto-driver, Ranjith Kamti, to go slow as media continued to hound him en-route. Then he boarded the city’s lifeline, Mumbai suburban local, to travel to Churchgate station in south Mumbai. The moment he reached Churchgate station, there was chaos; some people vandalised metal detector, media constantly were showing a negative report, stating AAP’s members vandalised public property. Actually, there was too much crowd at the station and managing everyone through that thin metal detector was not possible; crowd was over enthusiastic and chaos occurred. There are many political parties which are disturbed with the existence of AAP and their surprising emergence and success in the past. Power of Common man is always abused by traditional ruling supremacy; they never approved anyone breaking their monarchy. Destruction, attacks and chaos is not common man’s job, which is executed under political influences. Crowd has actually no face, but news headlines were constantly pouncing at AAP, social network was busy condemning the Churchgate incident. “News” is just noise these days. Surprisingly, group of people were invited to speak to media by keeping them in waiting at the corner till Kejriwal arrives, then the same group was giving bytes to TV channels, saying how annoyed they are with Kejriwal, but news channels forgot to show the larger side of success story of AAP rally in Mumbai. Anyways, other people refused to comment on this to media, because they were not harassed. Everyone was in a rush.
However, AAP supporters who accompanied Kejriwal did not damage property and metal detectors at the Church gate. The supporters are said to have behaved in an ‘unruly’ manner, causing inconvenience to the public, but it was just media created story. Time and again, many big politicians visit this city and same kind of traffic and chaos happens. Why to blame Kejriwal alone? People should think whether they want to put their trust in AAP or media channels which are biased toward other parties.
Kejriwal passed through AAP leader Mayank Gandhi’s constituency while on his way to the station. Gandhi is contesting the Lok Sabha polls against Congress MP Gurudas Kamat. AAP candidates Meera Sanyal, a former banker, and activist Medha Patkar are respectively contesting from the two constituencies. AAP, contesting its first Lok Sabha election, is looking at Mumbai as a major target after Delhi, where it formed a government for 49 days with outside support from the Congress. The party is also targeting the Maharashtra Assembly elections due later this year. Kejriwal is also scheduled to attend a fund-raising dinner at a luxury hotel in Nagpur on Thursday, where the price tag is reportedly Rs. 10,000 per person.
Kejriwal has one quality that hardly any Indian politician can claim: honesty. Also, he is an IIT graduate so obviously he is very intelligent. He is still politically immature and he has quite a bit to learn. Once he gets over the learning curve, he will be unstoppable. Let’s give this man a chance. We have given enough and more opportunities to the mainstream parties and its leaders. 99 per cent of them prove to be corrupt and capable of pulling India back. Give him chance, if he fails, throw him away. I think people are awake, they clearly see the difference between him and other political party leaders. The more BJP-Congress alliance blindly accuses him of publicity stunts, the more he wins the hearts of the people.
Remember, media and politicians never do anything without any reason. There is always a hidden agenda or motive in their moves. People should analyse and choose the best leader for themselves. In a way, Arvind has come a long way fighting against all odds and made it a great success. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) released its fifth list of 56 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, which include eight from Bihar and nine from Uttar Pradesh. His party’s fourth list of 61 candidates include journalist Ashish Khetan and satirist Bhagwant Mann. After the fifth list, the AAP has so far has announced 187 candidates for the general polls. Let’s see whether they make to power or break the power in 2014 Lok Sabha.
Vaidehi
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