Candidate deposits Rs 8500 in Rs 1 coins

Nagpur: Vilas Ballamwar of Gadchiroli, who is contesting for the MLC election from teachers’ constituency Elections, stood out among the nine candidates who filed their nomination papers on Tuesday. He reached the divisional commissioner office with a bagful of coins — all of Rs8,500— as the nomination fees.
The last day for nominations, saw nine candidates filing their papers for the February 3 elections.Prominent among them were Prakash Jadhav of the Shiv Sena who is a former MP from Ramtek and Anil Shinde, a Chandrapur-based teacher supported by the Congress-NCP.
But it was Ballamwar who stole the show with his coins. He claimed he had collected it as donation from teachers whose cause he is fighting. ‘One-Coin-One-Vote’ was a drive conducted in his favour to draw government’s attention to the failure of grants to unaided schools. It was quite an uphill task for election officials to count money.
“Teachers working in such schools in Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur, Gachiroli have not been paid salaries for last 16 years. We have taken out 142 rallies till date, but it is disgusting that the issue is not resolved yet,” Ballamwar told ToI. “I want to raise voice against injustice done to our fraternity,” he added.