National

No Jams On This Freeway

Gandhinagar: L.K. Advani

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No Jams On This Freeway
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Compared to the highly congested and densely populated Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar is an oasis of green. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s belaboured efforts to turn the state capital into a model city have transformed Gandhinagar and the credit has accrued to Advani’s account too.

A major project to improve infrastructure is under way. All roads have been widened and intersections beautified through the simple expedient of asking corporates and public sector corporations to take up the job and maintain it. The state capital has been declared a solar city and comprehensive plans are being laid for the purpose.

Prestigious educational institutions have also come up—of course, many of them sanctioned by the Centre, in other words by the UPA government. These include a post-graduate campus for the National Institute of Design (NID), another for the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology (DAICT, accorded the status of a university by the Modi government), the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation-promoted Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Institute of Petroleum Technology, the Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) and an IIT. There is also a spanking new railway station. "Whether nurtured by the Modi-led state government or the Centre," party spokesperson Yamal Vyas tells us, "it is the people of the constituency and the state who have gained and the fact is that Advaniji is representing them in Parliament while the state government is headed by a party which he leads at the national level."

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And though Advani leads the bottom five MPs from Gujarat with low utilisation of the MP Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds, his aides point out that great attention was paid to the creation of new assets. "Advaniji’s spendings (Rs 1.82 crore from May ’04 to Mar ’08) from the funds," says an aide, "have gone for a children’s and burns ward at the local government hospital and healthcare facilities in rural areas like Chandkheda and Rupal. If it is a senior citizens’ park at one end, it is a building for a biotechnology department at the Gujarat University at the other and assorted subsidiary medicare facilities in a third part of the city."

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If there is a complaint against Advani, it is the national leader’s inaccessibility. Former government official Arun Buch says that Advani had been requested to set up an office in Gandhinagar so that the public could approach him with grievances, but it hasn’t happened. Retired civil servant Prem Shankar Bhatt is unhappy that despite repeated representations, Advani failed to take up the issue of a local self-government body for the state capital. "Because there is no representative self-government body in Gandhinagar, it is deprived of funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM)," says Bhatt.

The demolition of over 200 illegal temples in Gandhinagar is another sore point against Advani. Regional outfit Mahagujarat Janata Party (MJP), floated by BJP rebels, has put up a candidate precisely to damage the BJP’s prospects on such points.

The general nitpicking apart, Gandhinagarwallahs have little to complain about. Secure in that knowledge perhaps, Advani has left the campaigning to his family and party workers.

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