By IANS,
New Delhi : They are huge, they are blue and they are full of air! They are the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) jumbo campaign delight.
The elephant-shaped material, which when inflated become six-feet tall, costs Rs.5,000 each and is being sold as ‘gubbara’ (balloon).
“Prepared from waterproof cloth, the elephants have been made following special orders placed by BSP activists,” Rajesh Agarwal, owner of Sheela Enterprsies, told IANS in Lucknow. The elephant is the election symbol of the BSP.
Agarwal, who has been in the business for 20 years, said this is the first time such costly electioneering material is available in the market.
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Mask mania catches on
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati seems to be following the winning ways of her Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi.
Taking a cue from the “Modi mask” that became quite popular during the last assembly polls in Gujarat, the BSP has now come up with the “Mayawati mask”.
“After an order placed by the BSP last week, we have just prepared 5,000 masks,” said Raja Sonkar, a campaign material manufacturer who runs a shop in the Darul-Shafa locality of Lucknow.
Made of plastic, the retail price of a mask is Rs.20.
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Will Congress clean bowl BJP candidate?
First a defector from the rival party, then a Bollywood actress and now a former cricketer – the names of possible Congress candidates from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat in Himachal Pradesh are flying fast and furious.
Whispers about former all-rounder Madan Lal being offered this seat by the Congress are now being heard, days after actress Preity Zinta’s name surfaced in this connection. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rebel Narendra Thakur, who has joined the Congress, is also believed to be a prospective candidate.
Whether the sitting MP, BJP’s Anurag Thakur, will be clean bowled by the Congress remains to be seen!
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Like Mamata, unlike Sonia!
A group of Trinamool Congress workers came all the way from Nadia district in West Bengal and held a demonstration before the spartan single-storey residence of party chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, asking to be fielded in the polls.
This prompted a top party leader to say: “Just because ‘didi’ (Banerjee) is so approachable and lives in a shabby house, you had the guts to come here.
“I’ve been in politics for long, but cannot dream of acting this way. Can you imagine demonstrating like this before Sonia Gandhi’s residence? You won’t even be allowed to go near it!”
The verbal volley seemed to work. The workers soon dispersed – after raising slogans in praise of Banerjee!