By Saiyed Danish, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Seelampur is place of odds and contradictions and the politics of this place is even more. Chaudhary Mateen Ahmad has won the Seelampur legislative assembly seat since 1993, but slowly people seem to be getting weary of him.
In 1993, Mateen Ahmed won on Jantar Dal ticket and won for the first time. In In 1996 he had joined Congress, but was denied ticket and contested as independent and won again. In 2003 and 2008, he contested on the Congress ticket and won both the times riding on the promises of better infrastructure and education. Mateen Ahmed is up again for the fifth consecutive term.
Mateen Ahmed
After five years of his reign in the area as its MLA his ground stand on matters appears to be shaky and his future blurred.
In the last MCD elections, Congress lost all 4 seats by rival parties in which two was grabbed by the BJP and one each to independent and BSP on whose ticket Shakeela Begum had won from Jafrabad ward, the locality from which Chaudhary Mateen Ahmad himself hails.
However, a confident incumbent MLA Mateen Ajmad appears to be unfazed by the poor show of Congress in MCD elections. When asked if its results could possibly spoil all the fun for him he said, “It will fail to create any impact on the election as we had lost MCD elections in 2008 also but see how I won last time.”
Speaking in a function organized by coaching centres based in the area to felicitate the bright Muslim students who made it to premier institutions of higher education in the city, he said that he has always given education of youth the highest priority above every other issue.
“Ask any of them and you will know about my assistance given to the poor kids so that they could fulfil their dreams,” he told TCN. Seelampur has a voting population of 147484 people out which 60% strength is of the youth. The minority votes in the constituency are 50%.
In the gathering Ch. Mateen Ahmad stressed that individual character building is the only foundation for society and nation building. Then he made an overstatement about life’s luxuries by saying that having air conditioner at home and travelling by air and eating in expensive places “must be common for you all” hence this should not be the goal of life.
However, by equating his personal luxuries with the uphill struggle Seelampur people have to go everyday was something not well received by the crowd. The MLA forgot that in the past five years the lack of basic amenities and the graph of crime, both has gone up which has an invertly proportional relation with his popularity graph going down.
“The MLA has done nothing about the problem of traffic and water logging in the area. It becomes real problematic for us to commute every day,” says a Naeem Khan, a resident of Seelampur.
“Another resident who runs a restaurant in the area says, “Filth attracts so many mosquitos over here that I do not get customers after sunset.” The situation of security is far from being commendable as the recent shootouts in the localities of Seelampur have shown that it is not a place for the businesses to prosper.
“Last year’s gruesome shootout which killed a man in Seelampur still frightens me and presence of the Thak Thak gang makes theft of almost everything possible. The MLA has never addressed these issues,” says Rashida Khatoon, a school teacher.
Posters have sprung up in the area by the opposition claiming that he paid no attention to issues of poor drainage which is the crown of all the problems in the constituency.
Kaushal Mishra is the BJP candidate from the area while Masood Ali Khan is the candidate on AAP ticket.
“It is his prerogative if he wants to claim about his so called development but let me assure you that the youth will vote in good numbers this time and even the Muslim dominated localities in the Seelampur have given encouraging response to our call for change. We also have Jain and Sikh votes rallying for us. Change in the air,” says Kaushal Mishra.
Although there seems to be huge anti-incumbency against him, but he still enjoys popularity, particularly amongst the lower-middle class Muslim pockets, and their support may once again help him clinch victory.