 "Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri")
The first stop on a busy campaign day is a small village near Pauri in Uttarakhand.
Former chief minister and Union minister Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) contestant from Garhwal, is greeted by a group of students wearing Narendra Modi masks, shouting "Abki baar Modi sarkar".
Soon, a woman appears, pleading financial help to take care of her ailing daughter getting treatment at a government hospital in Dehradun. The agitated woman goes on with her list of complaints against government departments in the past 15 years. But all she gets by way of assurance from the vote aspirant is: "Give all the papers. I will see to it that everything possible is done."
The boundary of what-is-possible has stayed with Khanduri all through his political life, even if that means saying a blunt no to people during election campaigns.
Jyotsna, a Dehradun-based political analyst, who has toured with Khanduri on a number of election rallies, says, "Unlike many politicians, Khanduri never shies away from saying no to demands that cannot be fulfilled. But once he is convinced that certain demands are just and within the realm of possibility, he makes sure they are met at the earliest. There is no 'let-me-see' kind of response."
Perhaps, this is a trait of the reluctant politician that is Khanduri. His entry into politics was an accident. His parliamentary debut, too, was anything but a planned affair. A veteran of four wins and one loss, the 80-year-old leader is seeking election for the sixth time from Garhwal. His tryst with this unusually large constituency in terms of area (spread across five districts) began way back in 1991, at the insistence of the then-BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
"I did not want to contest an election. I neither had the money nor the skill to contest. And, I did not want to contest against a member of my family," Khanduri told Business Standard, while recalling his entry into electoral politics.
There were reports that Vijay Bahuguna, Khanduri's maternal uncle's son, was to contest the election from the same seat as a Congress nominee. "I told Vajpayeeji there was no question of contesting against Vijay Bahuguna. Vajpayeeji was kind enough to understand my feeling and suggested that in case Vijay contested, I could withdraw my candidature. Till then, I did not know that withdrawal of candidature was possible," he recalls.
Getting a nomination was one thing but winning an election was a different ball game for a person who had entered politics only a few months ago and by accident. A few months after his retirement from the Indian Army in September 1990, he was attending a public meeting in Dehradun that was to be addressed by, among others, Vajpayee.
"Before Vajpayeeji was to address the gathering, he called for me and I was asked to deliver a speech. And, the word went around that I had joined the BJP," he reminisces.
But his formal entry into politics had to wait till he obtained consent from his mother, a staunch Congress supporter herself, and his maami, the wife of his maternal uncle, veteran Congress leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna.
"I was lucky to have gotten their consent. They gave me the freedom to choose my own political path. Perhaps they themselves were disillusioned with the state of the Congress then," says Khanduri.
The reluctant politician made a spectacular electoral debut in 1991 and went on to represent Garhwal in 1998, 1999 and 2004. His only loss was in 1996. He did not contest the election in 2009 as he was the chief minister.
He is seen as a doer and a performer by people in his constituency. Even BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is referred to as someone "who belongs to Khanduri Sahib's party" in this constituency. "The road you are about to take to go to Kotdwara from Pauri, was built when Khanduri was the Union surface transport minister," says Suresh, who owns a grocery shop on the outskirts of Pauri.
Khanduri earned the "doer" tag while serving as the Union surface transport minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet from 2000 to 2004. He is credited to have conceived the idea of the Golden Quadrilateral project that sought to connect Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai through a road network and put its implementation on a fast track. "He would use simple yet very effective management tools to ensure deadlines were met. He would note small details himself in review meetings and would remind participants about the progress on their assurances in the next meetings," says Manish Khanduri, the veteran leader's son. As a result, the idea was initially laughed off by his colleagues but fully backed by Vajpayee, became one of the signature projects of the Vajpayee government.
What is the next big idea he would like to see implemented if he gets elected this time? "It may not sound very big but it has huge potential. The Himalayas are home to a number of medicinal plants, most of which are smuggled out. We are incurring a huge revenue loss. If we learn how to make use of the indigenous medicinal plants, we can do wonders," he argues.
Khanduri is contesting a battle that has the potential to go down to the wire. He is pitted against Congress candidate Harak Singh Rawat, a Cabinet minister in the state, who also enjoys considerable popularity in the area. Rawat belongs to the caste that is a majority in the constituency.
"On the face of it, caste seems a non-issue in this area. However, if you scratch the surface, you will notice caste does play a role. And, caste feelings get accentuated in the last few days of campaigning when mysterious pamphlets surface, asking voters to vote for a particular caste," says a BJP worker closely associated with Khanduri's campaign. He did not wish to be identified.
Khanduri's campaign managers are banking on a strong group of nearly 350,000 voters of the 1.2 million who are connected with the Indian Army, directly or indirectly. "Being a retired major general himself, he enjoys considerable support from this group," says Jyotsna.
At a time when the Congress is facing double anti-incumbency (the party rules at the Centre and the state), Khanduri is not taking any chances. He has been touring the constituency for six months, holding, on an average, 10 public meetings a day. He claims to have covered 90 per cent of the area that can be accessed.
"Reaching out to the people is very tough in this constituency. Take the case of Lansdowne, a prominent town in the constituency. It has only 2,500 voters. At other large settlements, you are lucky enough to connect with 300-400 people at one go. And, travelling from one settlement to another takes hours," observes Manish.
What is also working in Khanduri's favour is his clean image. "I am proud of the fact that in more than two decades of public life, there has not been even a hint of an allegation against him. During his days at the Union surface transport ministry, there were reports of some wrongdoing by some officials. He immediately wrote to the CBI, asking it to investigate the matter. It was perhaps the first instance of a minister asking the investigating agency to probe his own office," says Manish.
But is it enough to ensure him a smooth sailing at the hustings? "Khanduri is honest, he is a hard-working politician. But he is up against a formidable player. It is, therefore, a keenly-contested battle," says Ramdhan Singh of Kotdwara. Incidentally, Khanduri lost an Assembly election from Kotdwara recently.
FACTFILE
* Constituency: Garhwal
* Spread across the five districts of Pauri Garhwal, Tehri Garhwal, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Nainital
* No. of voters: 1,269,053
* Men voters: 652,868
* Women voters: 616,157
* No. of Assembly segments: 14
