Bhopal: Shopkeepers in Bhopal’s Bogda Pul area appear delighted with all the media attention. After all, their long-time neighbour’s son is an MLA-elect. On Tuesday, Praveen Kumar won on an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket from the Jangpura assembly constituency in Delhi.
A bright star for Bhopalites, Kumar is a native of Madhya Pradesh’s capital. His father, PN Deshmukh, has been running a roadside tyre-repair shop in Bogda Pul area since 1979.
For those who expect to see rampant corruption in every nook and corner of politics, Deshmukh’s shop hasn’t seen any facelift even after his son got elected as an MLA for the first time in 2015.
Despite one of his sons being a legislator and another, Lokesh, working as a software engineer, Deshmukh still comes to his shop – manned by his aides Razzaq and Vijay – daily and spends time mending flat tyres.
“How can I leave my work? Everything I have today is because of this shop,” Deshmukh told News18 over the phone. He is now in Delhi where he wishes to stay till February 16, when the Arvind Kejriwal government is slated to take oath of office.
Deshmukh reminisces about his father who was a vaidya (herbalist) in Athner tehsil in Betul district. After his death, the family shifted to Bhopal and set up the shop.
Praveen would work at the shop apart from studying, recounted his proud father, saying he inculcated a sense of service in his sons from childhood.
After getting his BSc and MBA degrees from Bhopal, Praveen had joined a private telecom company which transferred him to Delhi.
He would tutor children from underprivileged families in the Modi Mill area, said his father, adding that his son later got associated with the Anna Hazare anti-corruption agitation in 2011 and eventually got in touch with then-activist Arvind Kejriwal.
“My son is still a simple man and lives in a small, rented house in Delhi,” said Deshmukh.
His neighbours endorsed his words. “We have sent several locals for medical treatment to Delhi and Praveen makes it a point to pick them up personally at the railway station and extend all-possible help,” said Irfan Siddiqui, who has a shop next to Deshmukh’s.
PN Deshmukh's tyre repair shop in Bhopal.
Siddiqui said once there was heavy rain and waterlogging in Jangpura and locals knocked on Kumar’s doors around midnight. So he set out amid the downpour with some aides to clean a choked nullah.
Vijay Vishwakarma, who has been associated with Deshmukh for ten years and works at the tyre-repair shop, said “Praveen bhaiya” is an extremely humble person and offers help to locals whenever he comes to Bhopal.
“He is the same man even after becoming an MLA,” said Vijay, who proudly sported an AAP cap for photographs. Autorickshaw driver Abdul Jalil also described Deshmukh and Kumar as grounded and simple people, expressing delight over “Bhopal’s son” winning in Delhi.
Kumar’s neighbours said he left a job that paid Rs 70,000 a month when he joined the Anna movement. Several of them had also gone to Delhi to help him in his election campaign.
Kumar served as parliamentary secretary to then Delhi school education minister Manish Sisodia in 2015-16.
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