With polling date less than a week away, one of the points of discussion among citizens is the qualities which the next MP should have. In this era of enhanced and convenient means of communication, some citizens in Dehradun opine that communicating with the Prime Minister is easier than reaching sitting MPs, whereas some people say that MPs or municipal councillor; it’s difficult to reach them after elections. Once the voting is done, problems of common man once again take back seat in the priority list of politicians.
This correspondent talked to the voters about their expectations from the candidates and also about the gap between MPs and them. Vimla Rawat, retired sports teacher from GGIC Haridwar who lives in Mokhampur said, “To make sure that voters feel connected, the candidates need to do something different in order to become more approachable. They can try developing an easily accessible application, through which a common man can complain directly to the elected member. We are voters; we are entitled to get answers to our problems from the candidate we have chosen to represent our constituency in Lok Sabha.”
Another citizen Ramshri Gupta, a resident of Chandan Nagar, who runs an eatery opined, “It’s difficult, in fact even risky to say something against people in power. None of these leaders are our friends. They forget about us after they get elected. We cannot even reach them if there is some problem. I don’t even understand why we are supposed to vote for MPs. We don’t know what they do in between one election and the next.”
Shekhawat Ali from Clement Town said, “PM Narendra Modi after travelling the entire world has finally come to Dehradun in order to address us but these MPs have not. Their shining cars and security is all we get to see. ”
A resident of Hathibadkala, Anuja Gairola said, “We as voters need to understand that there are some protocols. They will always have security because of threats and other things. However, they are elected to serve common man, so there should be some proper arrangement. For example the way they make booth offices for their election campaigns, they can also have some representative in every constituency after getting elected, so that people can have a direct contact with their respective MP. Or, they could set up a helpline desk, a toll free helpline number that people can easily access.”