Meeting Bunty Chor ...

For two months, we kept trying to meet, even see Bunty Chor. When I first started out, I didn't know who this Bunty Chor was. But over chai and internet searches, I heard numerous tales about Bunty from fellow crime reporters.
The whole story was reported over the course of two months, while I continued doing other stories. A few times I got lucky but most of the time was spent waiting, hoping that prison officials would let me see Bunty.
Meanwhile, we talked to the police, to the neighbors who had never seen Bunty but sort of seemed happy that Bunty was a star, and to jail officials.
The story is a reconstruction of all that they said.
We also got to meet Bunty. I just kept calling the Tihar Jail to fix an appointment and finally one Monday morning, I got lucky. I saw him finally in Tihar jail and the story could have been nothing but about the process of meeting him, and demystifying the super chor.
An edited version was published in the Sunday Section in the Indian Express on April 26, 2009.


Chinki Sinha

Through the maze of dangling cobwebs, and through the dusty iron grilles in the dimly-lit prison cell, Bunty Chor smiled, hesitantly, the corners of his mouth stretching slowly, unsure at first, and then came the full smile.
He didn’t ask me who I was, or why I came. He just began talking, explaining he wasn’t the famous Super Chor, the man who gave Delhi police sleepless nights, and who stole with such efficiency and charm that the cops love him, and the journalists are smitten by him.
Outside, the sun shone a pale yellow. Some of that light filtered in through the door at the back and the corridor smelt like damp, dusty book covers.
Against the light, Devender Sharma, 38, looked tired. He is balding, his cheeks have sunk deeper than what his picture in the police files showed them, and his collarbone is prominent. And he looks far from the image we had of him, an image that was constructed through conversations with the police and the reporters – a good looking thief who spoke fluent English, could imitate accents and had a girlfriend who was so pretty that she outshone even India’s most dazzling woman, Aishwarya Rai’s beauty.
On that Friday evening, when the sun beat down and the hours stretched endlessly, and the policemen stood around me, laughing, Bunty Chor almost convinced me he was a rambling madman.
After all, Bunty Chor, a Class IX dropout, is a conman, master at it, too, and I was just beginning. I did not know how to talk with him. At first, I treated him like Bunty Chor himself, asked him about why he did what he did, if life in prison was tough, to which he of course said “yes”, so that by getting familiar with him, I might get him to narrate his life freely. I asked him about the UTV film, asked him if he indeed asked for compensation, but the look of bewilderment on his face, wasn’t encouraging at all. So, I asked him what did heaven look like.
“It’s peaceful. You don’t feel hungry there. I have been there many times. The entrance is through a man’s body merged with a female’s body,” he said. “You see, it is inside me.”
The word heaven must have a consoling ring for him. He used it often. Maybe he was confused by the horror of what was ahead. Or perhaps, he was just pretending to be insane, carefully sticking to his convoluted conversation, not digressing even once.
Then he began to ramble, his eyes shifting, dancing, wild, yet tragic.
At first he told me he wanted to build a submarine. Yes, that’s what he wanted to do after he got out of the prison. Then, he whispered that the submarine would fly too, crisscrossing the skies, free in its path, chasing its destinations – London, America, Africa, everywhere.
”No, don’t call me Bunty. Bunty is dead. I am 130 years old. I have no name,” he said, his eyes scanning the faces of the policemen standing across him. “They are all against me,” he said.
He was caught in Chennai. They called him Hari Thapa. He had romped and kicked but no, Rajinder Singh, the SHO of Lodhi Road police station, kidnapped him, brought him to Tihar’s high security prison because the they were all conspiring against him, in fact the whole universe had turned against him, and they didn’t believe in
extraordinary powers of producing gem stones.
He doesn’t like the prison life, he said.
“It is uncomfortable. It is confining. And I have other things waiting. I want to build an aeroplane, a submarine,” he said.
Around me, the policemen laughed. But Bunty held his ground. His imagination never shorted out. In the dark, narrow cell bound by rusted iron rods, he gave his dreams too much running room. In between his submarine dreams and the lament over his stolen Kohinoor diamonds, Bunty had created a happy conspiracy for himself out of which he doesn’t want to step out.
Except at love perhaps, Bunty was lucky at everything else. He had amassed huge wealth, tagged at Rs. 6 crores, lived in expensive hotels, drove luxury cars, one of which fashioned like the famed Batman’s car where on pressing a remote control button, the backdoors opened and the seat pushed forward and he could stack his loot
effortlessly. He handled his money about as carelessly as he ran his life. And then he fell in love. He showered Jyoti with expensive gifts, including a diamond set that the police said they let her keep because nobody had come to claim it. But his beloved dumped him. And he was miserable, and cried often, Rajinder Singh said.
“If she would have stuck to him, he would have quit stealing. He told me when we talked about his life. He loved her,” he said.
But that afternoon, Bunty denied his love too. Yes, he had a Nepali wife, but he has to find her after he gets out of the prison, he said.
I had been warned that Bunty Chor was pretending to be insane, yet another of famed ploys to get out of jail. He had given the police a slip before on numerous occasions. In 1993, when he was arrested in New Delhi, he managed to run away from the office of Special Staff. In Chennai, where he was subsequently caught, he ate glass pieces in judicial custody and managed to get admitted in the government
hospital. Using a disposable syringe, he freed himself from the handcuffs. Twenty days later, at Chandigarh, he escaped by picking up a scooter of one of the sub-inspectors. Later he caught at Bangalore while trying to dispose off his loot and remained in custody until 1998 and then in Belgaon till October 2000. But he continued on the stealing spree, stealing anything he fancied, a dog, expensive
cutlery, watches, jewelry, anything. He didn’t need the money but he did it for the challenge or perhaps for the lack of anything better to do.
He was arrested later in 2002 after he committed more than 200 cases of theft. This was when Rajinder Singh first arrested him. And that’s when his girlfriend dumped him. That’s when Rs. 5 crores worth of goods were recovered.
Rajinder Singh can never forget the little auction they had at the police station when the victims came to claim their loot.
“Bunty remembered each loot, where it was from, who owned it before he did and he distributed it all himself,” he said. “He had such sharp memory.”

For two months, we had been trying to meet the famous Bunty Chor. The press had written about him in great detail. They made him a star, made him the enigmatic figure who stole because he needed to. His first theft was a loaf of bread. He was hungry then, and young too, a fellow journalist said.
“Then it became a habit, almost an obsession as if he was trying to prove himself,” he said.
But then, Bunty Chor sort of faded from public memory. Well, not exactly. Script writers came scouting for his story. Then Bunty Aur Babli was released. And then came Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! where the thief has an uncanny resemblance to Bunty Chor and the cop is Rajinder Singh somewhat.
“That’s his story. No two ways about it,” Rajinder Singh said.
But in the last one-and-a-half years, Bunty who is in Tihar’s Jail No. 4, a high security prison, since 2007, nobody came to see him.
“I can let you see Afzal Guru, but I can’t let you see Bunty Chor,” the Director General of Prisons BK Gupta said when we first approached him, flashing our press cards, requesting him to let us see him once, if only for a few seconds.
We hit the wall. We tried everything from sending in questions to jail officials to touring the city, hoping to find Bunty in people’s stories, neighbors’ tales, anywhere.
In Vikaspuri, where Bunty’s mother lived years ago, a group of children were playing cricket. When they heard “Bunty Chor”, they started humming songs from the film Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, the movie that police claim is based on Bunty’s life.
“Yes, he is from here. But we have never seen him. So what? We have seen the film,” a boy, hardly 10-years-old, said. “He is the super chor.”
And they giggled. They seemed proud of his feats. It made the cramped middle-class locality, one of the many in the ever-sprawling Delhi, famous/infamous.
Bunty has more than 550 cases of theft and burglaries against him.
Like Robin Hood, the archetypal thief in English folklore, Bunty Chor is almost a legend. Over tea, inside police stations, or outside newspaper offices, he is talked about often.
“Bunty stole for the kick of it. He picked out his car, and if it was in between two cars, he would break into the other two, park them on the side, then drive the favorite one out, park it, then park the other two in their spots, and drive away,” Rajinder Singh said. “That is how he was. He was stylish.”
Once, at Taj Hotel in Mumbai, he joined a foreigner at the hotel’s discotheque and picked up his laptop, documents and $1,500 while he was busy reading newspaper. He once attempted to steal a Rolex watch worth more than Rs. 9 lakhs from a five-star hotel in Bangalore. In yet another incident, when confronted with a Rottweiler, a ferocious dog, he threw chunks of chicken at the dog. The dog kept to his food. The man, who owned it, later lamented saying the dog was no good.
And once, attempting to break into a house, he saw the daughter watching porn on her laptop. He told her, hanging from the window, that it wasn’t right. The girl, ashamed, let him steal.
Such tales are numerous.
On that afternoon, while we waited to see our Robin Hood, we negotiated with the constables to let us in without proper ids. When I flashed my New York State driver’s license, they thought I was an advocate. They let me in, spoke with me in broken English, and made fun of my name. When Zahid Rafiz, another reporter, shoed his J&K election card, they dismissed it. But they relented.
We sat there waiting for the man to open the cell. A Sikh man, who sang “Singh is King” walked up to us. He looked like he knew the prison well. He looked comfortable there. We had just taken to a corner.
“You are new here,” Jujhar Singh said.
Of course we were. He had spent seven years in Tihar’s Jail No. 2 for a murder case, he told us.
We asked him how it was inside the jail.
“Oh, there is television, there’s everything,” he said. “But I don’t miss it.”
We askd him if he saw Bunty Chor ever.
“Who is he? The Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! guy?,” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” we said.
“You know him? How?,” he threw another question at us.
“Yes, I am his childhood friend,” I said.
Then, we walked to where Bunty was lodged. And we paced up and down, in anticipation, studying the visitors, though there weren’t many of them, trying to accustom our eyes to the dim lighting.
“Bunty Chor aa gaya,” someone shouted.
And then we see the man we have been chasing ever since. I take out the crumpled paper from my pocket and attempt to scribble. But his rambling is too suave, too fast, too smart for me to arrest it all on paper.
“Madam, tell them to release me. I have to go to London. That’s where I am from,” he said. “Give me you number. I will call once I am out of here.”
He never asked my name.

Form the police office - the view from the other side

“Bunty is a Super Chor. I am the Super Cop.”

Bunty Chor, a Class IX dropout, got lucky once with Lodhi Road SHO Rajinder Singh.
In 2002, the Delhi police had formed special teams, relied on surveillance cameras, and informers throughout the NCR region. When they finally got him, it was almost by fluke. Bunty slammed the door on them. It was a tip off by some neighbor in Noida that there is this businessman who goes out only in the nights and the police went
knocking on the door. When he shut the door, the police got suspicious and broke into the house but not before the super thief had called the 100 number saying that strange men were there to get him.
So they got him. Bunty then served his full conviction. But through his term, he struck a bond with Singh, who still swears by Bunty’s good character.
Leaning against the chair in his office, with coffee in tiny bone china cup in one hand, Singh’s eyes wander, then rest upon the window on the other side of the room, a strange glimmer in them, as he sets out to narrate his tryst with the city’s most-loved thief. The coffee gets cold, the layers form on the froth, but Singh doesn’t notice.
“He was totally a different character. He had a typical style. He stole only what he liked,” he said. “But he was such a humane character. I was never disgusted with him. And let me add, very intelligent too. When you deal with a genius thief, you got to plan. It was a great challenge for us.”
But Bunty got him too. They had long conversations. They discussed his style, his passions, his girlfriend, everything. He accepted his crime, confessed too. The police never had to raise their hands.
And the more they discussed, the more Singh got to like him, or so he thought. When Bunty got out of the prison in 2006, he had promised Singh that he would lead a straight life.
Then, one day, Bunty called Singh to tell him he was going to Mumbai to try his luck in Bolllywood. Singh was happy. Finally, the thief was converting.
But no, the super chor gave him the slip.
The Defence colony car thefts happened and Singh knew by instinct it was Bunty who was behind the thefts and the chase began. Yet, Bunty kept calling him, and the two kept talking, one running from the other, the other out to get him. In many ways, it was an ego thing.
Bunty had told Singh he wanted to help the police, that he had found enlightenment. But of course, none of this was true. Bunty was at its classic best, Singh said.
Incidents of thefts of luxury cars from Deefnce Colony, New Friends Colony, Hauz Khas and Malviya Nagar were reported.
“It was in the typical Bunty style. He had a thing for nice cars, the luxury cars, all good things in life,” he said. “You should have seen his girlfriend. She looks better than all the Bollywood women. She can put them to shame.”
He even went to Nepal, found himself a girlfriend, and met Charles Shobhraj. Meanwhile the police, led by Singh, fretted, drew plans, and hoped to nab him once again.
Delhi police and the South District put together all their resources, and sent out teams all over India, tracking his movements.
Bunty Chor was last released from jail in October 2006 for 42 cases of burglaries. After getting out, he spread his network to different cities in India and even abroad.
But on April 6, 2007, he came to Delhi from Chennai at 5 p.m. intending to commit crime and was arrested. The police recovered a Rado watch, four stolen laptops, clothes, diamond and gold jewelry, and one passport in the name of Hari Thapa.
“See Bunty was too smart,” Singh said. “But we were smarter. And by 2007, he was a spent cartridge.”
Singh has it all by heart. And he begins to list the interesting cases. Bunty Chor once stole a Honda Civic and fixed a red light that belonged to another car, and fixed it on top of the stolen car and crossed the Gujarat border and stole the Rado watch and an ATM card from which he withdrew Rs. 35,000. But when he went to withdraw more to another booth, the owner turned up.
“Bunty told him to register a complaint with the police when the owner told him about the theft. And then left the car there and boarded a three-wheeler and escaped,” Singh said. “He never lost his calm.”
That’s why perhaps it was difficult to catch him.
When they met in 2007, Singh and Bunty exchanged glances. The game was over for Singh. He got him once again.
But in court, Bunty, the conman, played yet another trick. To a crowd of young girls who wanted to have a glimpse of the handsome thief, of journalists, and of police, he acted bizarre to prove he had an unstable mind.
A journalist who was there at Patiala Court at the time, said, she almost believed him. But the police knew better. Bunty Chor still has many cases pending against him. According to prison records, there are at least 12 cases against him.
He spends his time reading the Geeta and other texts and talks philosophy.
Long ago, his parents disowned him. The police never knocked at their doors again.
Every night, Bunty shouts in the cell, asking for help. He blames the police for attempting to kill him, and writes a letter to the judge at Patiala Court everyday seeking respite. But then, the cops are done with it. They send him for regular check ups to the hospital.
And they still discuss his thefts, and laugh at the helpless man, who rambles.
“He is trying too hard,” Singh said. “We won’t be hoodwinked this time.”
For Singh, the chase has ended for now. And he gets back to his coffee.
“There would be no other like him,” he said. “It was fun catching him.”
But as Bunty once told the court.
"Police and I are pitched in a football game. Sometimes they score the goal. at other times, I win."

Kahani Movement gives Indian Americans a chance to document their histories ...

StoryCorps is a great idea ... a documentation of peoples' stories told by their children. And when they launched Kahanimovement.com, I thought it was a great idea. so, two hours before the deadline, I started making phone calls, frantic ones at that, and wrote to all those who I knew on facebook. Finally, people responded. An edited version of the article appeared in Indian Express on April 21, 2009.

Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 21, 2009

At every family gathering, Amit Kumar would tell stories of how he
made it big in United States. With only $100, he landed in New York in
the 1990s hoping to buy a BMW car and a house in the suburbs. And he
did it finally. But not before he went through the grind.
He remembers how his wife pushed the pram in the snowstorms in
Michigan in their early days to buy milk. They didn’t have a car then.
They worked multiple jobs, saved up enough and then moved to their own
house. And that’s the story he wants his children to know, and
remember.
With Kahanimovement.com, a project launched by the famous Indian
American brothers Sanjay Gupta of CNN, and Suneel Gupta of Mozilla,
and similar to journalist David Isay’s StoryCorps.com, that dream may
just begin to take shape.
The project is aimed at encouraging cross-generational conversation
that are relevant to immigrants to help them connect with their
history through shared stories of parents, grandparents and uncles and
aunts that immigrated to United States from India like Kumar or like
Gupta’s mother Damyanti Gupta.
The Kahani Movement, a non-profit project, was launched at the Seventh
Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles on April 21.
The project takes a Hollywood 2.0 approach and is asking young Indian
Americans to interview their parents, and other family members, record
it and then post it on the website for everyone to see. Its platform
allows on to browse through stories, and post their own in the form of
video, audio, photos, and of course writings.
Suneel Gupta, who has been working on it for more than one-and-a-half
years said this is a way to preserve those stories that are fast
evaporating, and for those who may never have the benefit of real
conversations with their ancestors.
“These are amazing stories,” he said. “Everyone can be a filmmaker,
everyone can tell stories.”
When his brother Sanjay’s child was born, the brothers wanted her to
know about everything in their family history, the way her
grandparents came to United States, their struggles, and their
successes, in fact everything.
While the Web site feature several stories already, Suneel will be
posting his own very soon.
And it is about his mother Damyanti Gupta who was the first female
engineer to work at Ford Motor Company in Troy, Michigan.
It was 1963 and Damyanti Gupta was looking for a job. Without
hesitation, she walked into an all-male company, the Ford Motor
Company. When the manager leaned over and told her they had no female
staff on board, she said “If you don’t begin with me, then you may
never have than benefit.”
That story stands out among numerous others, Gupta said.
Kahani Movement, it is also a way to honor family members. When you
have their stories and share them with others and hand it down to
generations after you, you preserve your history, he said.
“Take the time to sit down with the parents, grandparents and get
their stories. These are powerful, amazing stories.”
For Professor Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs at Columbia
University, this is a great opportunity.
“This is a different kind of thing. This is a connection within
families. I wish I had done with my grandparents,” he said.
When his parents come over, he would want his children to interview
them and post the footage, he said.
Another Indian American, Roopa Singh, who lives in New York, said the
project is a fabulous idea.
“I am a 1-1.5 generation Indian American.Passing down narratives was
always core to our culture(s). Now that the passing down has been
interrupted by the sheer scale of adjusting to new homes, new
languages, new children it is crucial that we have a portal to gather
our narratives. I'm always asking my parents for stories, so i'm
definitely interested in participating,” she said.
The stories that are currently featured on the website, including
Leena Rao’s narration of how her parents got married in Baltimore when
her mother found a tecahing job in the city and everyone started
looking for a suitable Indian boy for her, have been collected over
the past year. After President Kennedy lowered the immigration
barriers for Indians in the 1960s, many traveled to America. And most
stories have an underlying theme of struggle, hope and sacrifice.
And while many appreciate the idea to document stories that may other
fall through the gaps because nobody ever asked for those, a few think
otherwise.
Journalist Tejinder Singh, who is based in Europe, said such projects
are not able to sustain themselves and lose the enthusiasm over time.
“Most migrant groups … the communities are together. Such sites are
helpful for finding brides and bridegrooms. They tap into those
connections through it. This is stay in a cocoon,” he said.
But then, for immigrants like Amit Kumar, who wants his daughter Aushi
to sit with him one day and talk to him about what he went through to
give her the best education possible, about those moments when he felt
utterly hopeless and wanted to go back home, when he was laid-off and
washed dishes in a local restaurant but never gave up, there’s hope in
Kahani Movement.
“Yes, one day I want her to tell the whole wide world how I survived
the crash,” he said. “And this is just the beginning.”

Kapil Sibal worth 27 crores: affidavit shows

As the nominations begin, we trail the candidates. Kapil Sibal, the Congress leader, filed his papers on April 16, a day after the BSP candidate filed his.

This was filed for the Indian Express.


Chinki Sinha
April 16, 2009

As Congress leader and the party’s candidate for Lok Sabha elections
Kapil Sibal rode in an open-air jeep accompanied his wife Promila
Sibal and family members to file the nomination papers at Kripa Narain
Marg on Thursday, hundreds of supporters wearing tri-color bandanas
and waving the Congress flags cheered along the way.
“Haath nahi hoga toh kuch nahi hoga (if there is no hand, there will
be no work, no development),” Rampati, who lives in a jhuggi near
Pratap Nagar, said.
To her, the immediate worry is the rehabilitation of slum dwellers.
The Congress has stood by us always, she said. “We have always voted
for the congress. It is a family thing.”
Sibal, 60, is also the sitting member of Parliament from Chandni
Chowk. An advocate by profession, Sibal quit his practice in the
Supreme Court after he won the elections in 2004.
In his affidavit, Sibal declared assets and deposits worth more than
Rs. 31.29 crores. These include properties owned both by him and his
wife.
Most of those who came Thursday carrying flags and sweating profusely
in the sweltering heat had come from the nearby slums, hoping to
register their voice with the “sophisticated” Sibal and to show
solidarity with the party.
After delimitation, Chandni Chowk, which was the smallest constituency
in Delhi with a sizeable percentage of Muslims, now has 10 Assembly
seats and the Vaish community now constitutes the single-largest
community with more than 17 percent voters in the area.
Congress is counting on the support from unauthorized colonies in the
area and on its traditional votebanks of Dalits and Muslims. However,
with delimitation changing poll equations, Muslims now only constitute
13 percent of the total voters. Both the Bahujan Samaj Party and the
Lok Janshakti Party are eyeing the Muslim voters besides the Congress.
But Sibal said he is confident of winning the seat.
“This is yet another opportunity to continue serving the people,”
Sibal said. “I need the people’s trust and support which I accept with
all humility.”
Several Tibetans also stood near the stage and waved Congress flags.
When the government announced its plans of demolishing the Tibetan
colonies in Majnu Ka Tila, it was Sibal who had intervened. And that’s
what brought them out on Thrusday in his support.
“As refugees long ago, we came to India. They allowed us in. We
settled here and we are indebted to the Congress,” Namgyal Chozom, the
joinet secretary of the Resident Welfare Association at Majnu Ka Tila,
said. “We have been here since 1959.”
The seven sitting Congress MLAs - Mangat Ram Singhal, Haroun Yusuf,
Prahlad Singh Sahni, Kunwar Karan Singh, Anil Bhardwaj, Hari Shankar
Gupta and Rajesh Jain – from the Chandni Chowk area were also present
at the event. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit too was present and
said Sibal, who is also the minister for science and technology, is
one of the “best ministers.”
Sibal won the constituency in 2004 general elections where he garnered
more than 71 percent votes.
After Lok Janshakti Party’s Shoaib Iqbal, the party’s only MLA from
Matia Mahal, shifted to North East, Sibal said it was welcome news.
Iqbal has a considerable following in the area among its Muslim
voters.
Among the crowd of not more than 400, everyone had a reason like Amtul
Haseena, who carried ice in her hands to keep her cool. A Chawri
Bazaar resident, Haseena came all the way with her daughter because
the party handed out refreshments even though the heat was
overbearing.
“And I like him too,” she said, wiping out the sweat and reaching out
for her blood pressure pills in her bag. “They served pooris and
subzi.”

118 th Ambedkar Jayanti and BSP's call to people - vote for change that Babasaheb gave his life for

Rallies and jalsas are always fun. And even though I had to wait for more than three hours while they set up the stage and rolled out the carpets, it was time well spent talking to locals, getting the pulse of elections, and taking in the sight of the imposing Jama Masjid.
An edited version of the article appeared in the Indian Express on April 15.


Chinki Sinha
April 14, 2009

People thronged on the sides of the streets, queued up at the
chai-wallah stalls and leaned from the balcony of the Haji Hotel near
the Urdu Bazaar Tuesday to hear BSP candidate from Chandni Chowk Haji
Mustaqeem address them on the occasion of Baba Bhimrao Ambedkar’s
118th birth anniversary.
The stage with blue banners and life size posters of himself and
Mayawati, Kanshi Ram and Ambedkar was set up near the Jama Masjid gate
for the party’s event. Hundreds of chairs lined right side of the street and police personnel were busy shouting instructions trying to manage the crowd that came in spurts but lingered.
Mustaqeem, who is known and referred to as Ballo Bhai in the area,
owns a meat processing factory and contested the Assembly elections
last year too but was defeated. Party sources said that his reputation
among the Muslims would help them garner votes.
While Tuesday’s event was organized to mark the birth anniversary of
the Dalit icon, for the party, it was also a forum to tell the SC/STs
who have traditionally either voted for Congress or the BJP in the
area that a third alternative is there for them. It was also a way to
tell the community that the candidate respected Ambedkar and the Dalit
sentiments.
The event also kicked off the election campaign for the BSP candidate.
In the post delimitation scenario, 10 Assembly segments were added to
Chandni Chowk, including Adarsh Nagar, Shalimar Bagh, Tri Nagar and
Wazirpur, while the Sadar Bazar Lok Sabha seat stands scrapped and
merged with Chandni Chowk.
Mustaqeem will file his nomination papers today.
Sadaqat Ali, party’s secretary for the Chandni Chowk constituency,
said Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and BSP Supremo,
has taken the Dalit movement to new heights by furthering the work of
Ambedkar. With political empowerment now, the community, which
suffered oppression and discrimination, is now in a position to
negotiate for power, he said.
“We need to exercise the power of vote given to us and elect Ballo
Bhai from here. Vote for the elephant,” he said. “Vote for change.”
Amid shouts and slogans from more than 400 people who had gathered
near Jama Masjid Gate no. 1, BSP leaders talked about issues close to
people’s hearts – congestion, unemployment, and lack of quality
education and life for the minorities.
“The Congress and the BJP have done nothing for us. We have always
voted them to power but they have betrayed our hopes,” Ali said. “Now
you have a choice.”
For the 25-year-old Manoj Gautam, a Jatav, who lives near Kali Masjid,
the day was an important one. So what if Ambedkar’s birthday has been
hijacked by political parties to promote their electoral prospects by
showing solidarity with the SC/STs, the BSP leader Mayawati is one of
their own and her word counts, he said.
“Sibal and Maken don’t even come here. We don’t have jobs. We are
struggling. I supported Congress earlier but what have I got. Why not
give a chance to the elephant,” Gautam said, while he waited for
Mustaqeem to turn up. “Behenji has done a lot for the Jatavs in UP. We
hope she does the same here.”
Other locals said the issues of Chandni Chowk have remained the same.
No change has come here despite promises made over the years, Kamla
Devi, another resident said.
“We are counting on Mayawati and Ballo Bhai is a good man. In his
factory, he provides employment to so many people,” she said. “We will
support him.”
A new election office in Urdu Bazaar looked all decked up with
colorful lights and large posters of the symbolic elephant and
Mayawati and Mustaqeem. It was inaugurated Tuesday on the occasion.
Several BSP leaders were present at the event. In all seven
constituencies, the party candidates held similar events to mark the
anniversary.
In Chandni Chowk constituency where Dalits are a sizeable minority,
even Congress candidate Kapil Sibal chose to inaugurate its election
office at 224 Gujranwala Town, Part III Tuesday in honor of the Dalit
leader.
Senior Congress leaders Oscar Fernandes and Jai Praksh Aggarwal.
Fernandes who is Congress general secretary in charge of Delhi
officially too were present.
Sibal had won the 2004 general election from this constituency by a
landslide 71.17 per cent vote share and is hopeful of victory this
time too. He said the he Congress would not deviate from its
pro-women, pro-poor and pro-youth stand.
“Congress has always worked for all sections of society,” he said.

For the BSP, it is all about caste identity in the South Delhi elections

Elections in Delhi are a complicated phenomenon. Even though the fight is between Congress and the BJP and Congress mostly will win six seats out of the seven, BSP and other fringe parties may just cut into the votes and secure vote banks that could help when the next Assembly elections come up or maybe even for the next general elections.
According to senior BSP leaders, the aim in Delhi is to damage both Congress and the BJP and expand the voter base. Traditionally, the BSP has been called a "Dalit party" where Mayawati exhorted the lower castes to associate with BSP to register their case and get their voice heard. Lately, the party has been making inroads into other castes as well, including Brahmins, the OBCs, and the Muslims.
In Delhi, pitching three Muslim candidates is a way to tell the minority that the party is removed from the biases and will share power with those that have been shunned by others.
Coming back to identity politics, in the South Delhi constituency, it is all about identity. For the Gurjjars, it is mostly about a candidate who is from their community, and it is a way of asserting their presence on the political canvas.
And it is also all about who pours in the most money. Tanwar, the BSP candidate, has been using his wealth wisely to win over the people by disbursing pensions to the widows and running mobile clinics in his constituency.
In fact, most the BSP candidates, besides representing caste and identity groups, also have a enormous wealth. It is said that the BSP supremo hands out tickets to those who can buy those. The ticket price could range in crores, sources say.
In these elections, in the Congress bastion, the BSP is counting on caste conflict, repressed identity and of course money.
South Delhi makes for an interesting constituency because of the its gradients. Known mostly for its elites and their sprawling farm houses, the area also has a large number of urban and rural villages where basics like water and sewer lines are an issue. Tanwar of course is using all of this to his advantage. Add to it his Gurjjar tag and you can predict he is going to give tough competition.
An edited version of the article appeared in the Indian Express on April 5, 2009.

Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 4, 2009


The women sat on the fringes of the Bhaichara Samiti meeting at Ghittorini village while men crowded around Bahujan Samaj Party’s South Delhi candidate Kanwar Singh Tanwar Saturday evening as he promised the moon to the villagers.

At least 400 members of several caste groups – Valmiki, Jatav, Gurjjar, Thakur, Muslims, Kumhar and Vaishya - brought together by the Samiti coordinators who have been active at the grassroots level for months now in preparation of the Lok Sabha elections, had gathered to listen to the candidate, a Gurjjar and also one of the richest candidates in the city to file nominations. Such meetings are held in different parts of the constituency everyday, party workers said.

On Saturday, it was Ghittorini’s turn.

Ghittorini, an urban village, on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road, has its own set of problems. With its population well over 10,000, it has no dispensaries, no colleges in the nearby area, and a pond that is full of garbage and has an overbearing stench, which the villagers say is a menace.

For the villagers, who are mostly Gurjjars, it is a choice between Ramesh Bidhuri, the BJP’s candidate who is also a Gurjjar and related to Tanwar, and the BSP’s candidate, whose personal wealth is pegged at more than Rs. 150 crores.

“Sajjan Kumar has never even come here in his five years,” Jagdish Pradhan, a party worker, who was previously with the Congress but switched loyalties after he felt no development came to his village. “We will definitely not vote for Congress.”

Even Tanwar in his address exhorted the villagers to either vote for Bidhuri or himself.

“Choose between me and him but don’t give vote to Congress,” he said.

The Rajasthan wounds are still fresh in the community and many of the youth are bitter. “No BJP for us after what they have done to our brothers and sisters,” one man said.

The BSP has stayed clear from making promises on reservation for Gurjjars here.

Pointing to a thick gold chain that hung loosely around a Gurjjar man’s neck, Tanwar joked that the community was doing well in Delhi and didn’t need reservations in jobs.

“Here it is about development, about sewer lines, getting rid of the Lal Dora that marks the boundary of a village, and basic needs,” Tanwar said, as he smoked a hookah with the village elders.

Mayawati has long been banking on her Bhaichara Samiti meetings to bring new vote banks over to her side. In Delhi, many such samitis that invariably have a Dalit general secretary, have been working overtime to make inroads into a city that hasn’t been the traditional turf for the party. In 1993, the party’s vote share was just one percent.

While a senior leader said that BSP’s role this time around is to damage the major players, South Delhi is one seat where party higher-ups are hopeful of a win after the Gurjjars, who number more than two lakhs in the constituency, threw their weight behind Tanwar at a Mahapanchayat last week.

In this village, it isn’t about the lotus or the elephant. It is more about an assertion of self. The BSP has played smart to pitch a Gurjjar candidate, also a millionaire, who has been distributing pensions to widows and running mobile dispensaries. Having one of their own community get the seat is matter of pride.

Shyamawati doesn’t care who ultimately wins but it has to be either of the Gurjjar relatives.

“The vote will go to one of them,” she said. “But we like Tanwar. He is a good man.”

But with all this talk of the slow march of the elephant and down with Sajjan Kumar, the colorful Congress flag flew on top of a building. The elephant was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, it is the election commission’s rule. We are not breaking any laws. This one was put up by a child,” a party worker said. “We will get it down.”