Battle for Chandigarh: Will Pawan Kumar Bansal be able to trump Kirron Kher & Gul Panag?

Every morning, five campaign teams proceed to different directions from a sprawling bungalow located in the posh Sector 28-A locality of Chandigarh. Fourtime MP and Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal and his wife Madhu lead one team each. Their two sons, Amit and Manish, drive in opposite directions to cover as many of 6,17,000 voters in the city who will determine the fate of their father on April 10, in one of the closest electoral battles that the city of Chandigarh has ever witnessed. And the fifth team? “Bansalji’s two daughters-in-law form one team that campaigns door-todoor everyday,” reveals a Bansal aide.

Among the pamphlets they distribute among voters, there is one with a smart graphic on railway connectivity to Chandigarh. Thanks to Bansal’s intervention, first as an MP and then as Union railway minister, as many as 30 trains touch Chandigarh now, the pamphlet claims. No one denies Bansal’s stellar role in placing Chandigarh on the rail map of India. However, his six-month-long stint as railway minister also resulted in a CBI raid on his nephew’s house in a cash-forjobs scandal, which eventually resulted in Bansal’s resignation.

That incident has given enough ammunition for his opponents, BJP’s Kirron Kher and AAP’s Gul Panag, to attack him on the issue of corruption. “The CBI has cleared Bansalji. There are no charges against him. Take my word, the case will have no impact on voters,” says advocate and Bansal supporter Bharat Bhushan Menon, whose grandfather came to Chandigarh from Kerala a century ago.

Today, Menon says he is more a Punjabi than a Malayali and that Punjab’s politics is very much on his fingertips. He’s just one of the many who contribute to the cosmopolitan nature of Chandigarh. Being the capital of Punjab and Haryana, apart from being a Union Territory, the city houses government employees from both the states. And the expectations of these 70,000 government voters are very different from those of the rich traders who reside in Chandigarh but have businesses across the state and outside.


The constituency has a few rural pockets too. Attawa, for example, is a village where demands are basic: drinking water, regular power supply and the like.

For their part, Kher and Panag are well aware that the rail scam itself is not enough to dislodge Bansal who knows the pulse of Chandigarh’s voters as well as perhaps Kher and Panag know their way around Bollywood.

Bansal first won in 1991, lost in 1996 and 1998, and after that represented the constituency thrice consecutively since 1999. Kher, 58, a known name for her long association with theatre and films, is an ‘outsider’ although she was educated in Chandigarh.

In three of Kher’s public meetings where this correspondent was present, she was introduced either as Chandigarh’s bahen (sister) or Chandigarh’s beti (daughter). And she often resorts to Punjabi to tell the crowd how she grew up in this city which over the years has lost its sheen.

In her door-to-door campaigns, Kher appeals to people to come out to vote for BJP on polling day. “Don’t give it a miss. Think as if it’s the marriage of your closest relative,” she tells the owner of a dry cleaning outlet in Chandigarh’s Sector 31 market. As her supporters shout slogans including the inevitable “Ab ki baar Modi sarkar” and distribute pamphlets, Kher tries to cover as many shops and residences as she can.

Shiv Kumar, a tea vendor in Sector 31 market, gets emotional when Kher enquires about his problems. He has been selling tea on the footpath for the past 16 years, and does not yet own a stall. “Madamji, main chai banaoon?” (Should I prepare tea for you?), he asks her.

Kher is not alone in venturing out on door-to-door campaigns. Chandigarh’s compact size — 114 sq km — makes such padyatras a major campaign strategy for all candidates including Congress’ Bansal and AAP’s Panag. “She [Panag] is spending a lot of time in the suburbs, undertaking padyatras, understanding people’s problems and telling them how she will tackle those. I handle her office, prepare a to-do-list for the next day and firefight. It’s like a virtual battle,” says Panag’s husband, GS Attari, a pilot on Jet Airways’ international routes.

A former beauty queen, 35-year-old Panag is not an unfamiliar face in Chandigarh. But she is a late entrant as she was not AAP’s first choice. The party first gave the ticket to Savita Bhatti, wife of the late comedian Jaspal Bhatti, who turned it down citing personal problems. AAP then weighed the possibility of fielding legendary athlete Milkha Singh’s wife Nirmal Kaur. But that did not materialize. Manish Hukmani, an eye surgeon and AAP supporter, concedes that two weeks were lost in finalizing candidates. “But Kejriwalji’s visit to Chandigarh had an electrifying effect. I myself have taken leave to serve as an AAP volunteer”, he says.

Meantime, Bansal camp is counting on, besides its solid base of loyal voters, a division of anti-Congress votes. If elected, Bansal though will no longer be able to count on his proximity to India’s only Sikh prime minister Manmohan Singh who has announced that he will retire after the general elections. That closeness to the PM provided Kher with adequate fodder for another dig at the former Union minister at a roadside meeting in Sector 22. “You carry files and follow Manmohan Singh to attract the attention of TV crews. But did you get those files signed?” Sounds straight out of a Bollywood comedy?