‘Brahmin ka beta dakshina maang raha hai’: BJP’s Ggn candidate

Gurgaon: At a time when monsoon has laid bare the city's crumbling infrastructure, BJP candidate from the Gurgaon assembly seat Mukesh Sharma has been campaigning in the name of a "Brahmin" seeking "votes" as "dakshina".
"Pitrupaksha chal raha hai... Yeh Brahmin ka beta aap se jholi phela kar vote maang raha hai… Pitrupaksha mein Brahmin ko kuch dene se punya hota hai.(In this Pitrupaksha, the son of a Brahmin is asking for your votes. Good deeds will happen to you if you give something to a Brahmin)," Sharma told a gathering in Old Gurgaon on Monday.
Sharma, a wrestler-turned-politician, is the first candidate from the Brahmin community to be fielded from Gurgaon by BJP. Grappling with anti-incumbency of having led Haryana for a decade and winning Gurgaon assembly seat two consecutive times, BJP dropped its sitting MLA Sudhir Singla, a Baniya, and opted for Kumar instead.
The people of the city have only elected a Punjabi or Baniya MLA till now.
TOI had reported earlier this month that the party is relying on caste arithmetic to win from the city. According to party sources, Punjabi voters make up for the largest chunk in Gurgaon. Brahmins are the second largest group, and their numbers are increasing as the city is home to a substantial migrant population.
But Sharma's campaign outreach ruffled some feathers within his own party. A BJP functionary, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said seeking votes in this manner reflected his "limited vision" of the city. "Sharma should talk about the work done by the govt in the past 10 years and what is his vision for development. But he only speaks about issues limited to 900m around the IAF depot. The assembly constituency has many more areas and many urban voters," the functionary said.
Congress's Gurgaon candidate Mohit Grover on Monday hit out at BJP over Sharma's statement.
"For the past 10 years, they (BJP) have fooled the people. Civic amenities of the city are in a mess, there is no public transport. During summer, people have to face long outages. And health and education systems have almost collapsed," Grover said.
Raj Babbar, who was Congress's candidate from Gurgaon parliamentary seat in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, was also campaigning in the city on Monday. He attacked BJP for failing to address the city's civic crisis.