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An open letter to Gurdaspur MP Sunny Deol

An open letter to Gurdaspur MP Sunny Deol

Dear MP Mr Ajay Singh Deol, aka Sunny Deol, MP, Gurdaspur

Sir,

We, the voters of Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency, sincerely hope you remember us. We are the ones who, not long ago, sent you to the Lok Sabha by a resounding margin of 70,000 votes. The day you won was the day when an actor in you got the better of the statesman in Mr Sunil Jakhar. The BJP needed the numbers. You provided your party with the fodder it needed. Some of us are now seriously thinking of hanging ‘Sunny Deol missing’ banners in the streets of your constituency. It has been ages ever since anyone saw you in your own backyard. It is with regret that we say this. Regret, because your absence has put paid to several projects that directly need the intervention of the Central government. Recently, a local newspaper ran a headline-Is MP Deol coming to Gurdaspur? That made us recall Betteridge’s law (of headlines). This dictum states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘No’. This fits appropriately in your case. Rather, it fits to near perfection. One reason for your inaccessibility perhaps is that you keep yourself busy with your film shoots. The rumour doing the rounds in the run up to the recent Assembly elections was that none of the nine candidates fielded by the BJP, your parent party, had invited you to campaign. When confirmed, the rumour no longer remained a rumour. It turned out to be a fact, a fact as hard as the rock of Gibraltar. Incredible as it may sound, but that is the truth, the whole truth. Why have things come to such a pass? It is time for introspection, Sunny paji!

Whenever we ask your PA about your future programme, we are given the staple reply: “Sir will come in the next few days.” It is a classic case of “Tareek par tareek, tareek par tareek”. It is high time you visited and oversaw the planning and execution of some vital projects. The most prominent one is the elevation of the 3.6km narrow gauge railway track criss-crossing through the municipal limits of Pathankot city. It is a known fact that whenever the toy train – a euphemism for the Jogindernagar-Pathankot train – passes, and it does so a dozen times a day, all seven railway crossings simultaneously close down. Traffic snarls become common. To add to the confusion, the city gets divided into two parts for long periods of time every day. The economy of this once scenic town has been disrupted just because of these ‘fataks’. Experts claim that large parts of the city will die a natural death in the coming decades, if this problem is not dealt with immediately and effectively. It is time you take up the issue with the railways. Earlier, you had taken some interest following which the railways had sent a team that had proposed that the 3.6-km stretch of the track be elevated. The then MLA Amit Vij was also taken into the loop. That was a nice development as normally politicians of different parties are seldom on the same page. The railways had proposed that the elevation be financed jointly by both – state and Union governments. Vij managed to get Rs180 crore sanctioned for the project, but as he was doing so, there came the railways’ diktat that it would not go ahead with the venture. Things are now back on the drawing board. The latest we heard was that five under-passes and two flyovers have replaced the elevated track. In the run up to the 2019 General Elections, you had promised that a Film City will be established in Pathankot. However, the promise faded as fast as a C-grade film fades away from the memories of viewers. The fate of the much vaunted 800-m long Rs100-crore Makkoran Pattan bridge on river Ravi also hangs in the balance. The job of an MP is indeed a hard one. Actually, everybody knows you had initially thought that being a parliamentarian was as easy as yanking out a hand pump in a fantasy world from 30-feet deep. The other day we asked a BJP worker what stops our MP from visiting his constituency. Pat came the reply, “You reap what you sow.” And, by the way, do you know what is the political arithmetic of all nine seats of your parliamentary constituency post the Punjab elections? The Congress has won 6 seats, AAP 2 and the BJP one. We are telling you this because it is a known fact that you seldom take interest in politics. The only triumph for your party came in Pathankot, where the Punjab unit chief Ashwani Sharma contested. Here, too, the party did nothing for him to win. His win was carefully etched out by his spin doctors-ex-PPSC member Dr Samrendra Sharma and ex-Mayor Anil Vasudeva. They spun a narrative based not on what Sharma had achieved in the last five years. After all, he had done nothing of consequence because his party was not in power. The duo actually took to the people Sharma’s work done during his tenure as MLA from 2012-2017. That turned out to be a masterstroke. The duo had indeed delivered.

Mr Deol, Please do visit your constituency soon. The same voters whom you addressed as your “betas and betis” (sons and daughters) are keen on having a glimpse of the actor they sent to the Parliament.

Regards

Vox-Populi (Gurdaspur)

©The Tribune

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