Cong comedy ends up as jokeKOZHIKODE: When the Congress's Kerala unit got popular Malayalam comedy actor Mamu Koya to campaign for KPCC vice-president K. Muraleedharan, even it couldn't have imagined he could be so funny. The film star had been brought to two centres in Wayanad district to keep the crowds entertained. But before the Congress knew it, the joke was on it. In front of a huge audience, Koya began by reeling off a variety of complaints, against the Congress itself.As Congressmen squirmed, Koya described the party's leaders as ``unreliable'' and went on to cite an incident to prove this. The actor said he had once leased one of his rooms for use as a Congress office, but soon two party factions had begun fighting over it. ``Then I stepped in and bolted it with a big lock brought from Chennai,'' he said. Apparently, the real-life comedy resulted as Koya forgot his script: that he was there to win votes for Muraleedharan, who is contesting the Kozhikode Lok Sabha seat and is veteranleader K. Karunakaran's son. As Daddy Oldhand would console him, ``As long as the people had their votes' worth..''NAGPUR: Over in Nagpur, someone was taking his script too far. Going by the rule that parties can't display their symbols or any other election paraphernalia near polling booths, election officers at a centre (a school) here on Sunday had men scurrying up walls and even buildings. Their mission was to remove all wall-clocks, including in the classrooms and the clock tower atop the building, as the clock was the symbol of the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar. The director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centennial High School, K.C. Bajaj, was left fuming. Most of the employees on election duty in his school were wearing wrist-watches, the symbol of another party, he noted. ``Why were they not asked to remove their watches?'' Good question. What if someone got a shirt as symbol next?MYSORE: Even the Congress's reigning queen - Sonia Gandhi - can't match this. When partycandidate `Maharaja' Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wodeyar and wife Pramoda Devi step out to campaign in the rural areas of his Mysore constituency, enthusiastic voters clean the streets through which they have to pass and offer aarti, a treatment normally reserved for deities.Such is the sway of this scion of the Mysore royal family that when Wodeyar was roped in by the Congress to enter politics in 1984 and contest for the Lok Sabha, his victory was considered a foregone conclusion. He eventually defeated the Janata candidate by 64,000 votes, despite a Janata wave sweeping the state with charismatic party leader Ramakrishna Hegde being the chief minister. In the 1989 mid-term polls, Wodeyar increased his victory margin to more than two lakh, humiliating the Janata candidate again. But in 1991 mid-term polls, Wodeyar crossed over to the BJP and ended up losing to Congress nominee Chandra Prabha Urs, daughter of late chief minister D. Devaraj Urs, by about 17,000 votes.In 1996, Wodeyar returned to theCongress and went back to winning ways. However, according to observers, he faces a tough fight this time against BJP rival Vijaya Shankar, a sitting MP with a clean image.
