Simon crusade to retain votes and crown

Simon crusade to retain votes and crown
Santanu Saraswati
Fatehpur (Dumka), May 26—Congress nominee Simon Marandi’s election diary looks full at last. Narayanpur, Jamtara, Mihijam, Khairabani, Jama, Ramgarh, Shikaripara, Raneshwar, Kathikund and two meetings in the flood affected villages of Chorkatta and Kumhrabad.The meetings and the places have been selected carefully by the ex-BPCC heavyweight Sarfaraz Ahmed.There are backward caste in each of these places and are all Congress loyalists.Simon’s target, close sources say, is simple. Get as many of the anti-BJP caste people’s vote, the Muslims, are hopefully with the Congress so that the party could sail through this seat after 1982.The ex-Jharkhand Mukti Morcha vice-president, who has been pilloried for alleged bribery case, clearly has a point to prove and retaining his hold over the tribals—the only way he can prove his critics wrong.In Raneshwar on Saturday, the Congress suddenly released the electorate grievances against the BJP Government—both at the Centre and at the State. Simon began by saying the crowd: “I have spoken to God and asked him not to let the BJP shine this time till this place get its due. God told me that he won’t spare the saffronites for playing fire in his name.”The crowd took the cue and chanted their copyright slogan of early mid-Eighties: “Jab Tak Suraj Chand Rahega, Simon tera Naam Rahega.”“This was the Congress. This was what Congress people used to do when late Indira Gandhi was the AICC president. We were missing the real Congress for nearly two decades,” said Mahadev Mandal, a septuagenarian. Early last week, Simon began similarly in Ghasipur, Upparsitwa and later in Mihijam and Jamtara. “No party can have one leader. You are the leaders. You make Shibu Soren and now it’s your turn to destroy them for playing with you sentiments. He projected his wife. He projected his son and he wants all his family members to head you all. How can this go?” he thunders at the meeting.He goes on to explain how the country had to pay for voting in favor of the Atal Behari Vajpayee Government. “Us party saabko maaf nehi karna hein. Yehi log JMM-S ko khara kiya hein. Paisa bhi de raha hein. Lekin oh paise ap sab logoka hein. Usko saja milna chahiye (Do not forgive those parties. The BJP had made Shibu Soren fighting this poll. They are also funding the JMM-S. But that money is yours. Punish them)”. The crowd took the cue and starts shouting in chorus: “Simonbabu zindabad. Sonia Gandhi zindabad. Congress zindabad.”He also sang the customary paeans to Sonia Gandhi and India’s success in world forum on the issue of Kashmir during Indira Gandhi’s reign. “The Congress is like India. Men and women of different religion, caste and sect are members of the Congress family. It does not matter whether you are big or small. In Congress, everybody has always got equal opportunities. This is something that must not change,” he observed.But here the crowd failed to cheer. To them this little world is more important than “big-India family”. Their tears cost more than the lives of jawans in Kargil. An octogenarian tumbling on his stick started saying slowly: “Oh saab bara bara baat sunke ki korbo re. Pahle pet bharna hein ki bhasan sunengey? (What will we do by hearing all these big lectures? First we have to fill our empty stomach then to listen his speeches).As the convoy leaves Uparsitwa village at 7 p m night, only few faces of the crowd seemed satisfied with Simon’s claim for giving them a new status if voted to parliament. EOM.
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