Political Campaigning more important for BJP than Social Awareness
Poll-bound Gujarat BJP painted its party’s symbol over public awareness paintings ruining years of hard work.
With Gujarat elections in sight, the Rajkot unit of Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has launched a massive drive to paint its party’s symbol ‘Lotus’ on walls including those of public parks and offices leaving no bar in line with the statewide campaign launched by BJP Gujarat chief CR Paatil on March 13th when he along with other leaders of the party painted slogans on public walls. The duration of the campaign is supposed to last till March 31st as per reports.
The issue came to notice when in Rajkot painters hired by BJP started painting party symbols over the already existing social awareness paintings which were mainly highlighting the issues of global warming and climate change destroying all the efforts made in educating the general masses. So far two of such paintings have already been ruined. To stop the ongoing ordeal from causing any further damage Mission SMART City Trust (MSCT), the NGO that has been drawing all such paintings in the city since 2015, took objection to the Rajkot mayor, Rajkot municipal commissioner and BJP’s city unit chief.
Jitendra Gotecha, managing trustee of MSCT was of the opinion that if the BJP’s stunt continues the hard work of 1000 artists who made 15000 wall paintings in the city over the past 7 years with the help of art teachers, students and independent painters will be ruined as these people work pro bono and spend more than 8 hours to paint a single wall. However, after the complaint, BJP has whitewashed these walls.
As per the Gujarat Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, 1949, painting on property of a municipal corporation without prior permission of concerned municipal commissioner is illegal. But Kamlesh Mirani, president of the Rajkot city unit of BJP said, “This is nothing new, we do it before every election. Once the elections are formally announced, the Election Commission (EC) of India whitewashes them.” To this Shivlal Barasiya, president of Rajkot unit of AAP responded by saying, “This is not the right use of public property and officials concerned should take appropriate action, if not then we will also do it since government property is meant for all.” It must be noted here that the responsibility of such whitewashes across the country falls over EC which indirectly warrants the taxpayers to bear its cost.
The elections for 182 members Gujarat Legislative Assembly are slated to take place in December. The upcoming elections in Gujarat are being seen as the first step towards victory in the 2024 general elections by all political parties.
