Abhijit Speaks :

After having spent a few years living near Satara Road and the chaos that has been created by the proposed and horribly implemented BRT, it was clear that I’d not vote for anyone behind this. The mad rush with which the project was started suggested of sinister motives behind it. OBviously Mr. Kalmadi was out of choice for me (the fact that he is candidate of a party, I am principally against was enough for me to not vote for him.) The next choice was the BJP candidate, However I have decided to vote not for anyone going with Shivsena. If someone goes with ShivSena, they must pay the price. Naturally, the choice for me was Mr. Honest, Mr. Upright Arun Bhatia.

Now coming back to you Mr. Bhatia Though I have read your thoughts about “fighting terrorism” – They appeared naive at best to me.  Also, your plan of changing Pune with few hundred committees is beyond me, however regardless, I decided to vote for you for I thought and still think, you are one honest man and let me do my best to not just vote, but also suggest my friends to vote for you.

To take this a little further I offered a few suggestions about campaigning and send those to you. The email address that I used – campaign@arunbhatiaelect.org was “unreachable”, I retried it with same error. Based upon my previous experience dealing with eminent people, I am used to not getting replies from them. So that was the best that was expected of you. Having the email address unreachable is not just lame, its atrocious. Inspite of this, I took this issue and posted this message on your website -  To which I have not got a simple reply as yet on the website. Obviously that post has not been read or been bothered about being replied to.

So here is my question to you Mr. Arun Bhatia – If a person, whose political career rests upon maintaining proper communication channels with his prospective voters is not serious about maintaining his web presence properly. Can I trust the person with an administration of a city of 3 and a half million people?

On your website, I do not see any plan where you suggest what is the date and time on which you are going to visit a particular area. Now unlike many mainstream political party candidates (who also have other compulsions) nothing stops you or it did in the past to visit all the wards individually over last few days. I am afraid you’ve not done it to the best of my knowledge – nor there is a plan to do this. The elections are not faught sending pamphlets through newspapers and critising mainstream newspapers for banning your pamphlets. No one bans you from visiting your voters.

How many public issues in Pune have you prominently protested against in the last five years? eg. There certainly was the BRT issue, I have not heard a single word on your stand about this. So while I agree, you are one honest man, I have serious reservations about your ability as an able administrator. In view of this, I fail to reason to myself to vote for you. Can you please put forward your case beyond the usual blabberings about fighting corruption?