Down, but not out, Baba Siddique is still ‘at your service’

The pamphlet went on to say, “I thank each and every voter of Bandra, Khar and Santacruz for their support. Each of the 47,868 votes polled in my favour are important and showed the immense faith and support in the constituency, which was represented by me as your MLA, for which I have great affection and respect”.

“Why should I not thank my voters? I have thanked them the last five times [referring to his three terms as MLA and two as a corporator]. Around two lakh ‘thank you’ pamphlets have been sent along with English, Urdu and Marathi papers,” Siddique said.

Going by the pamphlets, Siddique “accepted the mandate with great humility” while promising to “continue to strive and work towards the issues concerning the constituency”. Siddique’s wasn’t a novel idea.
Yadav, who contested the Assembly polls for the first time and finished second in Andheri East, also distributed similar pamphlets and put up flex hoardings thanking his voters across the constituency. The only difference was that Yadav’s hoarding and pamphlets gave a larger display to PM Narendra Modi and BJP’s symbol lotus than his own face while Siddique’s pamphlet had no mention of his Congress party.

“Nivadnook Haarlo, Himmat Nahi (lost the election, not my courage),” went Yadav’s hoarding, adding, “Just 11 days of campaigning and contesting on a lotus symbol for the first time won me 47,338 votes from Andheri East, so I thanked my voters for their blessings.”

“I’m the only losing BJP candidate who thought of doing this, but I had to thank people who voted for me despite just 11 days of campaigning. Now that we have a BJP government in the state and with more visibility in the BMC, I’m working at solving issues in the constituency such as lack of proper water supply, drainage and waste collection and grievances I heard during my campaign,” Yadav said.

Meanwhile, Ashish Shelar, who trounced the three-time MLA Siddique by a margin of over 26,000 votes, refused to comment, just saying he was only committed to working for all.

Shiv Sena’s Ramesh Latke, who defeated Yadav from Andheri East, said “it is a nice thing to thank voters”.

anjali.lukose@expressindia.com