Ludhiana, January 7: Bhartiya Janata Party has hit upon an idea to collect money for tsunami victims, which also allows them to get in touch with a wide gamut of voters—literally. Prominent members of the party today started a campaign for collecting money for the disaster victims — by polishing shoes!

MP Avinash Rai Khanna led the pack, and was all seriousness today as he sat down to polish shoes to ‘help tsunami victims’. A BJP spokesman said that in the first round, four big cities of Punjab are to be covered. The campaign started from Ludhiana today. It will be carried out in Amritsar on January 8, in Jalandhar on January 11 and in Patiala on January 12.

Khanna inaugurated the drive. He and his supporters polished shoes in the northern region at the areas near Seeta Mata Mandir, Daresi road. The campaign was also carried out at Shingar Cinema, Civil Hospital, Dandi Swami Chowk, Preet Cinema, Sherpur Chowk, Pratap Chowk, Gagan Deep Colony and Dugri.

Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) President H S Hanspal dismissed the Shoe Polish campaign as ‘‘drama’’. He said BJP was resorting to such tactics to get political mileage. Hanspal said that district units of the Congress party was collecting cash funds for the victims without resorting to ‘‘such stunts.’’

An old gimmick
Newsline observed that many people did not get their shoes polished from BJP activists, and simply gave them money. Some gave even Rs 100 for the job, said BJP activists. In the evening, BJP sources claimed they had collected Rs 1 lakh approximately through the shoe-polish campaign. Incidentally, Khanna has a fetish for polishing shoes. While he was an MLA and wanted to raise funds to repair a road in his constituency, he and his supporters had taken to polishing shoes for the purpose.