Poll Diary

MEDIA BLITZ: After launching a full-scale war to conquer Uttar Pradesh, the BJP and Congress, the two national parties, have started a media war to dazzle the voters' as well as the media through hi-tech campaign. The party would be setting up as many as 12 regional media centres across the state while the Congress would match it by setting up a round-the-clock call centre in its dilapidated party headquarters to coordinate with party candidates in different districts and provide information to the media about party programmes, campaigns and candidates. Party sources claimed that a data-bank of 50,000 active workers in the state would be available with the Call Centre.

BJP's hi-tech campaign-cum-media centres have already become functional at strategic places including Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Kanpur, Agra while similar centres were being put up at Bareilly, Jhansi, Allahabad and Moradabad.

The Congress Call Centre, the first of its kind in the country, would not only provide information to the callers about the profile of the candidates but would also convince the voters as to why people should vote for the Congress. The BJP on the other hand, aiming high in this election, has let loose an army of central leaders headed by senior leader M. Venkaiah Naidu to manage and conduct the media campaign.
Naidu, who also heads the Poll Management Committee, indicated that the party was gearing up for a massive media blitz. Last week, senior leaders_L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitely, Sushma Swaraj and Kalyan Singh, along with other leaders, went for carpet-bombing across the state simultaneously. These leaders held rallies at Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi , Jhansi, Allahabad and Kanpur, on the same day at the same time.

In the meantime, Kapil Sibal, convenor of the AICC's National Media Committee, has started 'unmasking the truth' behind Mulayam Singh Yadav's claim to have turned Uttar Pradesh into Uttam Pradesh. After all, everything is fair in love and elections.

Have Guns, Will Travel: Guns, despite the EC crackdown, seem to be in high demand on the eve of the crucial assembly elections. In a state where most of the people live by guns, even licensed guns, rifles, revolvers and carbines are availble aplenty. According to 'official statistics' released by Kapil Sibal, the Union Science & Technology Minister and convener of the AICC's Media Management Committee, during the past three years 8,40,000 firearms licenses were issued. In Lucknow alone, over 100 gun shops sold 41,000 firearms.

In Uttar Pradesh, even licenses are issued to private individuals for carbines. So far, 360 carbines were given to politicians and dons and they include 14 MPs and 81 MLAs. Sibal said this alone exposed the truth behind the Samajvadi Party's poll theme-song 'UP mein hai dum/ Konki jurm yehan hai kum' (UP has strength because it has less violence and crime).

Quoting the National Crime Report 2005, a copy of which is displayed by Amitabh Bachchan on TV ads, the famous lawyer said: Uttar Pradesh has the highest incidence of violence in the country, highest incidence of kidnapping and abduction (12.9 per cent of the reported cases in the country), the highest number of kidnapping of youth (age group 15-18 years) that accounted for 22.5 per cent of the total cases in the country and highest dowry deaths-1,564 between 2000-2004.
He alleged that Uttar Pradesh as a whole has emerged as the 'crime factory' producing criminals.

REVEALING FIGURES: If the poll 2002 was tough for candidates, 2007 is going to be the toughest so far in view of the multi-cornered contest everywhere in addition to the Election Commission crackdown. Here is how candidates had walked over razor blades in 2002 as the winning margins show:

01-200 votes: 07 MLAs

201-500: 13

501-1000: 18

1001-5000: 99

5001-10,000: 104

10, 0001-50,000: 46

50, 0001-1, 00,000: 05

Source: Election Commission

MONEY EXCHANGE: It is not only the BSP leadership that has faced the charge of selling out tickets to aspirants to become "Aaj Ka MLA". BJP and SP leaders in fact had been crying hoarse that Mayawati forces candidates to cough up huge sums of money to get a party ticket. It is another matter it has not affected the popularity of the party.

Now the BJP too is facing the same situation .Yogi Adityanath, the sulking BJP MP from Gorakhpur, has revealed that the BJP general secretary Ramapati Ram Tripathi had made a huge fortune by selling out tickets to some controversial candidates in Poorvanchal. Yogi has demanded that the BJP should axe Ramapati Ram Tripathi for defaming the BJP by selling tickets to candidates with a criminal background.
It is however not the first time when Ramapati Ram Tripathi faced such
charges: he had faced similar charges by a section of young leaders in the recently held local bodies' elections in the state. In Basti district, Tripathi ensured a ticket to forest mafia and despite stiff resistance by the former chief minister Kalyan Singh, he has been declared an official candidate.

GROWING RESENTMENT: As an old adage goes, when a ship starts sinking, rats are always the first jumping out. This is what Mulayam Singh Yadav's detractors are saying after a series of desertions. At a time when the beleaguered Mulayam was being cornered by the Opposition, the Centre, Election Commission and the Judiciary, his own trusted friends too have started deserted him. It was Raj Babbar, party MP who was first to revolt against the party leadership after being neglected for years. Then, it was Manawwar Hasan, MP from Meerut and an old friend of Mulayam, who went to the Rashtriya Lok Dal at the request of Anuradha Chowdhary, a close confidante of Choudhary Ajit Singh.
Shaffiquur Rahman Barq and Beni Prasad Verma, two MPs, left the company of Netaji after the polls were announced. Beni Prasad Verma had been a trusted comrade of Mulayam for the past 30 years and used to be the No. 2 in the party. Apart from four MPs, Kunwar Akhilesh Singh, former MP from Maharajganj, has also joined hands with the BSP.
Rakesh Verma son of Beni Prasad Verma and cabinet minister in the Mulayam government, has also quit the Samajwadi Party with Dilip Verma, MLA. Another embarrassment for Mulayam Singh Yadav was when three MLAs Rajpal Tyagi, Surendra Kumar Munni and Sunil Singh, who were declared official candidates of the party, refused to contest elections on the Samajwadi Party and joined the rivals' camp. In politics, people say, there are no permanent friends or foes.

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