‘People vote on basis of work done, not religion’: BJP’s ‘Vinod Bhaiya’ eyes second term

Around 10 am on a Thursday morning when the roads in north Mumbai’s Malad were bustling with vehicle horns and motorists stuck in traffic, a small crowd of party workers from the BJP gathered with loudspeakers and party flags.

At the helm of the gathering was Vinod Mishra, who will be contesting for the second time in the upcoming civic polls from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) ward number 43.

After his candidature was announced by his party last month, Mishra has been carrying out door to door campaign in his constituency.

On Thursday, Mishra visited the local market at Malad’s Kurar village along with the slum pockets in Pathanwadi.

In total, the P north constituency has an electorate size of 46,923 voters out of which, Mishra says 20 per cent or more than 8,000 are Muslim population.

Besides this, the population strength in this ward is largely dominated by members of the Maharashtrian, Marwari, and Gujarati communities.

Last time, Mishra won by a narrow margin of 700 votes, following which he was designated as the party’s group leader in the BMC till 2022 – the year when the body of elected representatives dissolved.

As part of his campaign, Mishra visited households of voters, he spoke with shop owners and members of the local business community.

Locally known as ‘Vinod Bhaiya’, Mishra is like a popular guy next door to voters across communities. In some households he offered prayers with the family members while in some shops he was welcomed with garlands.

One of the biggest successes that people in his constituency spoke about is that he was able to push the administration restart and complete several stuck projects of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). Once these projects got completed local residents living in the slum areas benefitted largely since they got houses in their names.

“In my constituency, people don’t vote on the basis of religion. They vote on the basis of work done. This was a minority dominated ward and yet I became a winner from here by defeating candidates from Congress and Samajwadi Party. This year also I will be re-elected but with a larger margin,” Mishra told the Indian Express during his campaign trail.

“One of my biggest successes during my last tenure was that I was able to get flats and houses for slum dwellers under the government’s SRA scheme. As part of the slum redevelopment scheme, many projects remained stalled and I carried out sit-in protests and demonstrations to ensure they get started and completed on time,” he added.

The ward number 43 will also see a quadrilateral fight as besides BJP’s Mishra, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded Irfan Nawab Khan, while the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) has fielded Ajit Balakrishnan Navrane and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has also fielded its candidate Jayesh Rajesh Pandey.

However, several voters expressed their confidence in Mishra’s candidature.

Sushma Patil (67) a local shop owner at Pathanwadi, said that it was during the Covid-induced lockdown when Mishra visited households to ensure everybody gets vaccinated. Patil also maintained that he arranged food packets for migrant workers who were stuck in ward.

“One of the key qualities of Mishra is that he knows our ward in and out and is well versed not only about the problems but also about their possible outcomes,” said Avinash Singh, another local resident.