Karnataka - Belgaum   

Belgaum MLA takes up charity work, tongues wag

FOR BETTER PUBLIC IIMAGE: Abhay Kumar Patil (centre), MLA, distributing free notebooks, pencils, and colour pencils among poor schoolchildren in Belgaum.

Belgaum: Abhay Kumar Patil, MLA, is engaged in image-building exercise after his reputation suffered a dent over certain matters.

He has launched a charity programme of providing small school kits to poor children, who are either orphans or living with single parents in his Belgaum South Assembly constituency. He has decided to distribute the kit consisting of note books, pencils, rubber-erasers, compass box and colour pencils to about 850 children he has identified as orphans or living with single parents.

As part of his programme, he is distributing these kits in different localities falling in his constituency. On Saturday, he distributed kits to 190 children studying in 20 schools in Anagol and Tilakwadi clusters. But there is speculation about the motive behind this work of charity. In an Assembly constituency, even few hundred make a big difference.

Given his allegedly coercive and arm-twisting methods to get works done in areas of his choice, such as demolition of roadside shops and residential structures in select areas to enable road-widening works with applying same yard stick when it came to road-widening works on Bogarves-Station Circle (passing through Fish Market) or on the Old P.B. Road which have earned him a bad name, he needs to do some damage-control. This is worrying, admit his camp followers.

Thus, he started catching the attention of the children and their parents. He organised a “Mass Holi” (festival of colours) last year. Early this year, he had organised international kite festival. Both attracted a large number of people, including children. But, will it help him shore up his popularity is a moot question.

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