Bengaluru: Civic polls are less than 10 days away and this time the IT city is seeing some refreshingly new faces in the poll fray with are many non-political candidates in the fray.
One such candidate is an architect TS Subbaiah who is still learning the ropes of how to become a politician. He does the BBMP office rounds to get his candidate ID and explain his accounting. This time 40 residents’ associations have come together to support him as an independent candidate for the corporation elections.
"It's a threat to politician. If you don’t do what we are asking for, there will be a change," said Subbaiah, who is contesting from Radhakrishna Temple ward.
Loksatta candidate Rohith Simha, 33, quit his plush job as a quality engineer at multinational manufacturing firm Bosch to jump into politics. He has five volunteers, takes his pamphlets personally to homes, knows it’s not an easy task but is determined.
"Like in corporates we have goal setting, monthly review and year end appraisals. We'd like to bring all those principals here and ensure that corporate culture is implemented here on the ground and it's absolutely possible," said Simha as he tours his constituency Katriguppe ward.
With no political chamchas, candidates like Subbaiah and Rohith are taking to social media to take their campaigns forward and relying mostly on the educated voters.
"A for accountability, B for best roads, C for clean Bengaluru," added Subbaiah.
Rohith Simha said that he had been a common man till now. "The reason the common man has to step out is that our ideas and needs are not being met by these professional politicians," said Simha.
Apart from these, there are those like JN Savitha, a woman constable who gave up her government job to jump into politics, and Devika Raj, who did a full-time course from the Bengaluru political agenda committee and attended classes to make herself qualified for politics.
Savitha said, "If we have salary, pension, it only serves us. Public service will serve so many."
Devika Raj claims that they have been trained in leadership programmes. She said, "So many people took classes in the leadership programme like Nithin Pai, Avinash just as people go to school, I went for these classes."
Nearly one third of the candidates in the fray this time are under 40 years, raising hopes that the new BBMP council could have a younger and more energetic lot. Besides, many of these educated candidates feel that even if 10% of them make it to the 198 wards in the corporation, it would make a big difference in the next five years, some voters feel.
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