Members of Dehradun based student activist group Making a Difference by Being the Difference (MAD) congratulated Mayor elect Sunil Uniyal ‘Gama’ on his victory and urged him to have a long term vision for sustainable development in Doon.
MAD has been active on environmental and civic issues for about seven years now and had also carried out a campaign to elicit focus of all mayoral aspirants prior to the election.
A team of volunteers had reached out to them and given a token gift of a pair of gloves used in clean-up drives and a plant sapling to those who responded positively to the meeting request.
The gesture was meant to remind the aspirants to conserve the greenery of Doon and to ensure cleanliness-two of their major responsibilities that are often lost out in vote bank politics. This handing over was done with both Gama and the Congress mayoral candidate Dinesh Aggarwal.
According to the group volunteers, when they had met Gama, he had smiled while accepting the token and said, “first let me become the mayor”. MAD has often been at loggerheads with the municipal corporation of Dehradun leadership and has often campaigned on inaction on public property defacement, vacant plots becoming garbage hotspots, encroachment on ravines, lack of cleanliness and the choking of the city’s drains and rivers.
MAD plans to approach Gama soon after his swearing in and will demand a time bound roadmap to address each of the aforementioned concerns.