The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Magicians enter campaign fray

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Sunday, May 04, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Magicians enter campaign fray

S. Harpal Singh

Abracadabra: TRS leaders appreciating and applauding the demonstration given by magician Aslam Bhai Syed on the tricks he plans to use for election campaign for their party.

ADILABAD: Though their repertoire does not contain the ‘election’ trick, a few magicians have been drafted by political parties for campaign work in Adilabad during the impending by elections. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) has engaged the services of the three-member team of Aslam Bhai Syed from Nagpur for added entertainment value to the rather drab business of canvassing for votes in Adilabad Lok Sabha constituency.

On coming to know that byelections are being held here, three teams of magicians claiming specialisation in election campaign have reached Adilabad from the city of oranges (Nagpur) in Maharashtra. These magicians go about bandying words relating to the plus points of the party that engages them while the tricks get performed at street corners to small audiences like passers-by.

“The last three years saw us campaigning for stalwarts like Union Minister Kamal Nath and the likes. Many of the candidates who had hired our services had won from respective segments,” claimed Aslam Bhai Syed.

“These magicians will add colour to the campaign. Because of the novelty involved and to draw the attention of people we have engaged the magicians,” said T. Madhusudan Reddy, TRS candidate for the Lok Sabha constituency.

Rustom Khan, Aslam’s brother and team mate said the magic trick campaign is a favourite in rural areas. “We use a language that is easily understood by the people of rural areas.

Though we cannot speak Telugu, a large chunk of the population understands Hindi and Marathi and that makes our job easy,” he added.

This team of magicians had done commercials in Madhya Pradesh at the beginning of their career as professional magicians. Qadeer Khan, the third member of the team said Smriti Films, an ad agency in Bhopal had given them the break for commercial advertising.

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