Dreamgirl Hema Malini, BJP’s candidate from Mathura, continues to charm the electorate in this ‘City of lord Krishna’. Interestingly, she is pitted against the sitting MP and RlD chief Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Chaudhary, for whom she had campaigned in the last lok Sabha polls.
Hema appears to have an edge over Jayant, who faces a strong anti-incumbency and carries the tag of a “non-performer”. He is citing moving a private member’s Bill on the land Acquisition legislation in Parliament as his major accomplishment, but the voters are cut up with Jayant, who carries the third-generation legacy of the great Jat leader Chaudhary Charan Singh, for his unfulfilled promises.
“We will not vote for Jayant. He has never visited us. We are told that he is not even courteous to his party workers. His wife is campaigning for him is seeking apologies and requesting to give him another chance,” said Siddhant Mishra, a resident of Chaityana Enclave Phase-I in Vrindavan.
The need for roads, power, health, education and small-scale industries have not been met with, he pointed out.A film star Hema, riding on the “Modi wave,” is the last thing Jayant would have wished.Even the political equations have undergone a churning in the last five years. The BJP and RlD were together in the 2009 lok Sabha as alliance partners but Ajit Singh switched sides to join the Congress-led UPA to be a Cabinet Minister.
Other contenders in the fray are BSP’s Yogesh Divedi, Samajwadi Party’s Chandan Singh and AAP’s Kapil Mishra.Hema, who continues to hold sway over the electorate, initially faced hiccups from party’s local unit. But once that was overcome, she has been hitting out hard against Jayant in her campaigns by accusing him of being a ‘non-performer’.
“There is lot of spiritual and tourist potential in Mathura. I would make efforts to develop infrastructure so that tourists proceeding to Agra may not miss Mathura. My deal for buying a house here is also in final stage,” Hema said at a public meeting in the Math tehsil last week trying to drive across the point that she intended to stay there and work for the constituency.
Amidst the regular chants of godliness at length and breath of Mathura, the holy city craves for cleanliness. So far, the political representatives besides the Government and local administration have been indifferent. “Whatever ‘good’ work seen here is due to the benevolence of NGOs and social activists,” locals pointed out.
Some sections also believe that Hema would be able to break the jinx of Mathura of never having a woman Parliamentarian even though it is the birth place of epitome of love — Radha — worshiped by people from across faiths. Though many women candidates fought elections from here, none registered a win. Even the powerful lok Dal candidate Gayatri Devi, wife of former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh, suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1984 elections.
Hema is banking heavily on the eight lakh women voters of the total of about 17 lakh Mathura electorate. Vrindavan is also home to over 10,000 widows. Unfortunately, they are deprived of their electoral rights. Some of them as old as 107 years and as young as 20, though appreciated the rehabilitation efforts of NGOs like Sulabh International.
locals are waiting for a glimpse of the yesteryears’ actress. “We have seen her in cinemas long ago and now in advertisements. If she visits us, we would ask her to ensure voting rights to widows in this city as this has now become our home. We should be able to cast our votes and put forth our demands to the legislators. I have a vote in Kolkata but how do I vote,” said 78-year-old widow Manu Ghosh who has been living in Vrindavan for the past three decades.