Suryakant Shinge's campaign covers several important areas of the constituency

23 April 2009:

Procession in the Working class areas of Central Mumbai
After the planning meeting in the afternoon when the program for the coming week was decided, a truck was decorated with banners of the candidate, displaying his election symbol and the facsimile of the Affidavit on a 100 Rupee Stamp paper. The truck was loaded with campaign material in Hindi and Marathi and the procession marched off to N M Joshi road area (Delisle road) distributing the manifesto to the people hanging around on the road side.

The procession marched into a large building having several hundred flats, called Panchganga. Here, residents already knew Suryakant as it is close to his office area. Many people shook hands and congratulated Suryakant for standing in the election as People's candidate. Several village communities are housed in this building as 'Gramasth Mandals', providing shelter to people of their village. Several gramasth mandals took keen interest in the new politics that Suryakant represented.

Vani chawl was another building that the marchers went in. It is a old 3-storied building with a long courtyard in the middle. While Suryakant explained why he was standing for election, others went up the stairs on both sides to distribute the manifestos door to door.

Next the campaign march went through the BDD area in N M Joshi marg. A large number of manifestos were distributed in the streets and several street corner meeting were held. People smiled to show their agreement with what Suryakant had to say.

The entire troop got on to the tempo and was transported to Worli BDD chawls. They were joined by some activists of the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI). Once again the distribution of manfestos was done on road and some selected Chawl buildings. In one of the chawls, a well wisher family put the vijay teeka on Suryakant's forehead to wish him success.

Gopal Nagar Slum
Finally the marchers went in the Century textile mill area. The mill is now closed and a few mill workers remembered Suryakant and his comrades who used to come in support of the workers when they were agitating against the closure. The marchers were guided by the SUCI comrades into the narrow lanes of Gopal Nagar slum which is situated behind the mill area. The roads are so narrow that twice the route had to be changed to accommodate the Shri Ayyappa procession which was also taking place there.

Although the activists had been walking since the morning in different areas, the positive and encouraging response from people kept their enthusiasm high right to the end of the long campaign day on Sunday.