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Living up to his common man image, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal will kickstart his Lok Sabha campaign in Mumbai today by using public transport to reach out to voters, the party said yesterday. |
After landing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Kejriwal will catch an auto-rickshaw to go to Andheri station.
There, the former Delhi chief minister will take a suburban train to Churchgate and interact with commuters on board during the 40-minute ride.
Around noon, he will be at Churchgate for a formal welcome by Mumbai South Lok Sabha candidate Meera Sanyal and other party workers. He will be closeted with them for about half hour.
After a media conference, Kejriwal will take part in a two-hour road show, from the historic August Kranti Maidan to Khilafat House, an equally historic venue.
These areas fall in Mumbai South constituency from where the Sanyal, a former corporate chief, is contesting as an AAP canndidate.
Later, Kejriwal will proceed via the Eastern Freeway to take part in another road show in the eastern suburbs in the Mumbai North-East constituency where social activist Medha Patkar is the AAP candidate.
In other election related developments, the entry of former Samajwadi Party leaders Amar Singh and Jayaprada in the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has not only surprised political pundits but has upset calculations and poll strategies of major parties in Uttar Pradesh.
Amar Singh is most likely to be fielded from Fatehpur Sikri general seat while Jayaprada may get Bijnaur.
For the Fatehpur Sikri seat, the Samajwadi Party has fielded Pakshlika Singh, wife of Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister Aridaman Singh, while the Bahujan Samaj Party’s candidate is Seema Upadhyaya, wife of BSP leader Ramvir Upadhyaya, said to be close to party supremo Mayawati.
Upadhyaya is the sitting MP from Fatehpur Sikri . She defeated Raj Babbar of the Congress. Babbar however defeated Dimple Yadav, wife of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, from Firozabad in a by-election.
The BJP is still to make up its mind, though names doing round are of former army chief V K Singh, actor Sunny Deol, Babu Lal Choudhary and Keshav Dixit. With the entry of Amar Singh, the party will need to field a heavyweight, say party workers.
Meanwhile, stand-up comedian Raju Srivastava yesterday returned the Samajwadi Party Lok Sabha ticket to contest from Kanpur saying he was not getting enough support from the local units of the ruling party.