The Hindu : National : No enemies in politics

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Thursday, Mar 26, 2009
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National

No enemies in politics

ANIL KUMAR SHASTRY

A Bangalore firm has orders from Congress and BJP for masks of their leaders

Photo: Bhagya Prakash

Two men pose with masks of L.K. Advani and Manmohan Singh in Bangalore. The masks are being made by a private company for the election campaign.

The sight of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani hugging each other is enough to stop anyone dead in his tracks, considering they traded bitter charges even on Tuesday.

However, such public display of affection took place in Bangalore. The visages of both leaders were mere masks, which have been around in politics for quite some time now. Remember RSS ideologue Govindacharya describing former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee as one?

Then there were the Narendra Modi masks, which helped the Gujarat leader sweep the Assembly elections there.

The mask industry made its debut in Karnataka too when the State went to Assembly polls last year. Acolytes sported tens of thousands of masks of national and State-level leaders of Congress, BJP and Janata Dal (Secular), presenting a surreal scene faces frozen into a permanent smile.

This time around for the Lok Sabha elections, Bangalore-based Events House has come out with masks of several prominent leaders. “We have collected attractive and smiling faces of political leaders ahead of the Lok Sabha polls,” said Belooru Raghavendra Shetty, Managing Director of the firm based in Jayanagar.

Mr. Shetty told The Hindu that Events House, which had produced masks for the Assembly polls under the banner Newsroom, has firm orders from the Congress and BJP for the masks of their national leaders.

Nodding towards an image showing people wearing masks of leaders across the political spectrum, Mr. Shetty candidly said: “At the end of the day, all these leaders are the same.”

Added Events House Chief Executive Ravishankar Bettampady said: “Production of masks was one of the ancillary works being undertaken by the company. Since there are limits on poll expenditure, we don’t supply more than 3,000 masks of a leader at a time.” The company has kept ready masks of A.B. Vajpayee, H.D. Deve Gowda, BJP President Rajnath Singh, Narendra Modi, H.D. Kumaraswamy, Chandrababu Naidu, Siddaramaiah, Mallikarjuna Kharge, D.K. Shiva Kumar, S.M. Krishna, Rahul Gandhi, D.V. Sadananda Gowda and others.

Grassroot workers in political parties feel that masks fill up the void created by the absence of buntings and banners because of the Election Commission directive. “We can reach out to the voters easily and make the canvassing appealing with the help of prominent leaders,” said one.

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