Rehabilitation, housing are at their North and Centre in Mumbai

Despite her two-year hiatus, Priya Dutt feels confident about being able to reconnect with her voters

For the 14.07 lakh voters in Mumbai's North Central constituency, it all boils down to two candidates from the two major national parties - Poonam Mahajan, the sitting MP from BJP and former MP Priya Dutt from Congress. While campaigning in every corner of their constituency, which has a significant slum population, the candidates have focused on issues like housing and infrastructure.

The North Central constituency includes Vile Parle, Chandivli, Kurla, Kalina, Bandra east and Bandra west. Since the areas have a significant slum population, rehabilitation and housing are the biggest concerns. Both Mahajan and Dutt have stressed on the importance of rehabilitating the project affected persons (PAP) especially those living near the airport land.

Mahajan claims that there are around 80,000 PAP on airport land, who have been residing in the area for the past 30-40 years, and have not been rehabilitated earlier due to certain problems in the policy. "We understood that there were a lot of lacunae in the policy and nobody cared for it since it was only an issue that was taken up only during elections. We sat with the Chief Minister, called the AAI and read the entire policy. Another survey was carried out by SRA within six months. Now, since March 4, we have been giving houses to people and have made the policy so strong that they will get their houses, which was my election promise," she said.

Poonam Mahajan

Dutt on the other hand alleges the current government does not have the capacity to rehabilitate these people and in turn, spoke out in support of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's promise of giving houses measuring 500 square feet each. "I have always believed development should happen in a humane way. Rehabilitation of PAP should happen in situ or two-three kilometres away so that they don't suffer. It did not happen with this government in the various projects taken up in the past five years," she said.

BJP continues to hail the ongoing work of setting up the Metro in Mumbai as a major success, while Congress has consistently criticised it by speaking in support of people who have been adversely affected by the construction work. Mahajan too lauds the project and promises to be the bridge between the state and the central government in the future. "Our focus will remain on what we can do to make the life of Mumbaikars a little easier. We will work on more public transport to support them," she said.

'Bulldozing through everything'

Meanwhile, Dutt referred to the protests organised by residents of Bandra and Juhu against the Metro project, and pointed out that during her term, a meeting had been organised with the CM and they had succeeded in getting the approval for the underground Metro. "That decision has been turned around and it has affected a lot of residents in the area. There is a lot of anger since the government won't even review it," she said.

Dutt added that when Congress was in power, projects like SCLR, the sea-link, the airport, the elevated airport road, the Milan Subway flyover had been completed while the BJP-led government had no such work to show. Referring to the Coastal Road project, she said that BJP was 'bulldozing through everything'. "During our time, the Coastal Road project was stalled due to environmental clearances. We wanted to ensure every clearance was in place before the work began. But this government doesn't even have all the clearances from all the departments and there is even a High Court order which states that," she alleged.

Corruption chatter

Corruption in the government is an allegation that both BJP and Congress have openly made against each other. Referring to the policies around rehabilitation of slum tenements, Mahajan said, "In the past 15 years of the Congress government, a lot of attempts were made to redevelop those houses. But there was so much corruption that the builders took the TDR but didn't give the houses to the people. We were able to solve that problem."

Fingers were pointed at the BJP-led government as well and its performance in the past five years. Dutt said the sitting government failed to address long-standing issues of people living on land owned by the Central government and Collector. "You can't just tell people that you will look into it. You had all the power you wanted. We, as a government, were still struggling because we had a hundred coalitions with us and had to deal with the opposition as well. But yet we managed to do so much," she said.

Votes never came down

While Dutt served as the MP between 2009 till 2014, she was defeated by first-time candidate Mahajan in the last Lok Sabha elections Dutt says she lost since she had missed out on the support of young and first-time voters. "During the last elections, people didn't know the candidate. The fight needs to be more on the basis of what people want from a particular candidate. But people were voting for Modi. Our vote share never came down. We just weren't able to capture new voters," she said.

The candidates are making attempts to capture young voters. In the run up to the elections this year, apart from a series of meetings Dutt and Mahajan have been conducting with various residential societies and slum residents, they have also launched campaigns on various social media platforms to connect with the youth. While Mahajan shared a form on Instagram titled #PoonamPhirSe which people could fill to be a part of her campaign for a range of volunteer work, Dutt launched a '555 campaign' through which she appealed to people to promote the party's messages, encourage people to vote for their party and take five people along to vote.

On various occasions, both the candidates have emphasised on the importance of the first time voters. Mahajan refers to the first time voters as the "nirnayak matdaan" (deciding vote). "They will be the deciding factor for the country's future all over India. The youngsters know what kind of leadership they would want in the future," she said.

In Dutt's favour?

In comparison to the 2014 election Dutt feels that this time around things are different and she has been organising discussion sessions with youth. "I don't want to tell people whom to vote for. It's very important for us to give them information which will help them vote in an informed manner and not be swayed. They are young adults and we must give them the opportunity of making up their own minds by seeing all the facts in front of them," she said.

With just days left before the city goes to vote, both candidates are putting their best foot forward and the polarisation is quite visible among the voters. This may work to Dutt's advantage as her campaign primarily focuses on criticising policy decisions like the beef ban, which affected the Muslim community, demonetisation and GST, which has affected the poor and the small time traders.

Despite her two year hiatus, Dutt feels confident about being able to reconnect with her voters. Mahajan hopes to create the same confidence in the public as they felt in 2014 and ensure that her voters remember to support her again.

Farida Bandukwala, housewife

Voter says

'We are happy with our local representative who has given importance to the issues we raised. However, on the broader scope of things, I'm still not sure about who to vote for. I have been witnessing so much criticism, especially on social media, against the Muslim community, which I had never experienced while growing up. It makes one wonder about the future'

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