Vote with Your Wallet: Rs 20 Campaign for Transparent Politics
Public support, not corporate funds in Koderma. CPIML's strategy for issue-based representation in Parliament
Koderma: What can you do with Rs 20 in the summer? Probably buy an ice cream. But the same amount can help send your favorite candidate to the Indian parliament.
After the disclosure of the electoral bond beneficiaries list, it is no longer a secret that the Bharatiya Janata Party received the maximum donations from corporates for political funding. Taking a stand against such a practice, CPIML and its candidate in Koderma have resorted to taking the route of seeking direct support from the general public. While the party CPIML is collecting only Rs 20 from each family in Koderma, Vinod Singh has sought public support to fight the election.
The BJP candidate here is Annapurna Devi, a state minister in the present NDA government.
“Since Vinod Singh has been declared the INDIA bloc candidate from Koderma, we are campaigning for the party and seeking Rs 20 from each house to fight the election,” informed Rajesh Yadav, a CPIML leader who is campaigning in the Gandey assembly segment.
Vinod Singh, the three-time MLA from the Bagodar assembly segment, is known as a committed leader and was awarded the ‘Outstanding MLA’ title in the Jharkhand assembly in 2022.
Yadav further said, “We are not facing much difficulty as the people of the area are excited that Jharkhand’s best legislator is contesting for Lok Sabha, and they are themselves contributing to the party funds.”
Vinod Singh told eNewsroom, “Rs 20 is the minimum amount, and by this, we are not only getting good support but also connecting with the people. However, I have also requested people to support and fund our campaign.”
“We want to keep raising issues of the common man, and if we get funds from corporations, we will not be able to do so. Our work is to become the voice of the voiceless from the roads to the assemblies and parliament, so we want the public to support us,” added Koderma’s INDIA bloc candidate.
CPIML is following the same pattern of collecting Rs 20 in Bihar also, where its three candidates are contesting as INDIA bloc nominees.
“Contesting an election this way is a very challenging step especially when the opponent is from BJP. We know that every BJP candidate gets huge funds from the party. Most of the saffron brigade candidates themselves remain affluent. This is how you can take on corporate funds and the anti-people policies of the governments. You will be liable to people and not a few corporates who will silence you with their money, which the world’s largest democracy witnessed in the last ten years,” said Vishnu Rajgadia, a political analyst.
In the 2019 assembly polls also, Vinod Singh had crowd-funded his campaign and beat a BJP MLA from the Bagodar seat.
“The most significant thing for Koderma voters is that no voter can say that they are exercising their franchise for someone who is not a good candidate but as they have to vote against the BJP, so they voted for such and such people. Here they have the chance, not only to defeat the BJP but also to choose the best candidate, who has a clean image and who has kept his path clean on the way to parliament,” added Rajgadia.
