If it's purely the law of averages at work, then Gurudas Kamat of the Congress should prepare himself for a thumbs-down in Mumbai Northeast. The constituency has not returned the same candidate to the Parliament in successive elections since 1984. Kamat trounced BJP strongman Pramod Mahajan last time. That means he should not stand a chance this election but Kamat is unfazed and believes he will buck the trend this time around.Neither Kirit ``Moneybags'' Somaiya of the BJP nor Ram Manohar Tripathi of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are really tough competitors, says Kamat whose progress in the Congress can be traced from his college days. In the heady Rajiv Gandhi era, he was calling the shots in the Youth Congress and believed his political future was secure until he walked on the wrong side of the Mumbai Congress chief Murli Deora and paid a price. Still, he has managed to hold his own in the most complex and polarised constituency in Mumbai. Kamat says his stint in the Lok Sabha has not beenenough to take on the problems of his constituency. During a breather on his campaign trail, Kamat took time off to speak to SMRUTI KOPPIKAR.You made history of sorts defeating Pramod Mahajan last time but the contest is very different this time. Last year, it was a one-on-one contest between Congress-allies and BJP-Sena. This time there is no contest at all. Kirit Somaiya does not even consider himself a candidate while the other opposition does not count. So where's the contest? Somaiya has said publicly that he was a reluctant candidate and I know the reasons for his reluctance. The BJP had tried to get other people to fight me. they tried persuading Jaywantiben Mehta but she apparently refused on the grounds that her work has been in Mumbai south, and that the atmosphere is not good for the BJP in Northeast.Still, there will be a division of non-BJP votes because NCP has put up Ram Manohar Tripathi. Records show that whenever there's a division of secular votes, theCongress has lost the seat. With due respect to Tripathi, he is in the electoral fray after 21 years. Thereafter, he hasn't been among the public or done much work. Besides, like me, many are baffled about his candidature in the first place. In 1984, during my first election, he came for a speech, blessed me and hurried away because he had to be, simply had to be as he said, in Amethi for Rajivji. He said ``The Gandhis and the Congress are my family and I have got everything from them''. In the last 14 months, he has said that Sonia Gandhi's presidentship will change the entire fortune of the party and it will be a dream come true when she is in the PM's chair one day. This man is now asking for votes on an anti-Gandhi plank? If I play a video tape of him saying all this, his campaign will be finished. At the most, his appeal is among a limited number of Uttar Bharatiyas but that's okay.There is confusion among the Dalits and that's likely to affect the Congress. That's what itseems from the drawing rooms, as though the Dalit vote is going to split into many fragments, but that's not the reality at all. The Ambedkar and Gavai factions are with the Congress anyways. Even Ramdas Athawale's faction which is quite a substantial group is working for me though Athawale himself is in the NCP. And, the Muslim vote is unlikely to go to the Samajwadi Party any longer.What are the issues that you have approached people with this time? Stability is a key issue and people are responding to it. We cannot afford seven governments in as many years. In the last three years or so, we have lost six months every year because of elections. Imagine what it does to policy, welfare programmes, industry. Then, there's the Mumbai Urban Transport Project II that was approved in 1995 as a holistic project for the city but was sidelined by the BJP-Sena government to concentrate on flyovers. The flyovers were nothing but a route for them to make money. I want to revive the MUTP II in itsentirety and look at the railway aspects. Then, there's the issue of slums. The project has been a failure and we have a different one in mind. It's not entirely free as they promised but a very nominal amount and definite results because it won't depend on the builders lobby.Finally, how do you respond to questions about Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin and her Prime Ministerial aspirations? Believe me, it's not an issue among my voters at all. Hardly ten per cent have approached me about this in spite of my exhorting them at the end of every meeting to ask me questions. People want issue-based politics and her foreign origin is not an issue, really speaking.
