Arvind Kejriwal’s fact finding trip to Gujarat turns into media circus

KUTCH/BHUJ: Ali Mohammed Yukub looked amused at the sight of a television journalist positioned on the roof of the village primary school. The 32-year-old fisherman from Batreshwar village in Gujarat’s Kutch district, who skipped a day’s work to catch a glimpse of Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday, is distracted by the cameraman struggling to capture the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader's interaction with the villagers below .

“I've never seen so many of them together in our village,” he said to an onlooker right next to him.

A day after he first stepped into the state, Kejriwal’s visit to Gujarat has turned into a media circus of sorts. The sudden interest is courtesy an eventful first day which featured his brief detention by the police on grounds of violation of model code of conduct and an attack by protestors on the way to Bhuj on Wednesday.

But the increased media attention on Thursday came at the cost of meaningful interaction with the local people — Kejriwal’s main objective of the Gujarat visit. Constantly trapped in a circle of journalists and TV crew during the seven stops he made in Kutch and Morbi districts of the state, the AAP leader often had trouble reaching out to people with grievances.

So whether it was while speaking to aggrieved landowners near Mundra port or during an inspection of a local government clinic in Maliya village of Morbi district, the man was expected to give sound bites at every step.

“Yes, it’s a problem some times, but what can one do?” he told ETin his car while being trailed by an entourage of reporters on his way to Bhadrashwar village.

The former chief minister of Delhi travelled almost 500 km on his second day out in Modiland, mostly in rural and less developed parts of the state in a bid to tap into any latent anger against BJP’s prime ministerial candidate on account of land acquisition or lack of social development.

The response to his visit wasn’t always enthusiastic. Kejriwal’s audience on Thursday was a mix of active supporters, sceptics and protestors. The latter, according to Kejriwal were “misguided” but still his “friends”. And some were just curious to catch a glimpse of the man who hogs a large part of their daily television viewing. “I just wanted to see him in person,” said a smiling Mahesh Gupta, a student, before he was suddenly pushed aside by the camera crew of a news channel to capture Kejriwal, the man he sees so often on television.