‘1,900 dalal vs 19 lakh junta’

In the past two months, Amethi has got used to these sights. Vishwas, who declared his intention to contest from Amethi long before AAP had made up its mind, has stationed himself there, going door to door, shifting into huts of villagers, and grabbing, if nothing else, eyeballs in the usually  one-sided battle there.

The first AAP candidate to begin his Lok Sabha campaign though has moulded the canvassing as much in his image as the party’s. Vishwas pitches it as a fight of 1,900 “dalal (Congress middlemen)” versus 19 lakh “janta (people)”, a Rs 500 crore exercise versus a padyatra, and Raavan vs Raghubir (Ram).

He seeks Rs 2,014 from each gram sabha — Amethi has around 1,200 of them. “I can’t compete with their Rs 500 crore exercise,” he tells people. And every night, he holds meetings where people come with their problems. “This is swaraj,” he says.

That Vishwas is hurting the Congress somewhere is evident from the frequent run-ins with the party’s loyalists.
Spread out on charpoys in  huts, Vishwas never loses touch with Twitter, Facebook or news. In a message for Canadian NRIs who have adopted the Amethi seat —Sumesh Handa and Anurag Srivastava — he seeks “support in the form of laptops, mobile phones and campaign material”.

His other helping hands are childhood friends Irshad and Rauf. Saaz Band has followed him from Delhi. The AAP district team only works in the background so far.

That he is a poet of local fame and was one of AAP’s known faces helps, as youths tell him they have his songs on their cellphones.

Comparing the contest to the Ramayana, Vishwas tells people: “Raavan rathi, berath Raghubira (Raavan is on a chariot, Ram is reduced to walking)”. However, he adds, this story too will have the same end: Rahul “will lose by over 2 lakh votes”.