An Independent candidate campaign style has attracted attention in Jharkhand.

Human rights activist Mahesh Bando, 43, who took retirement from the Indian Army in December 2019 has thrown his hat on the poll fray as an Independent candidate for the Chatra parliamentary constituency which will vote on May 20 and is earning attention for his campaigning on bicycle in the scorching heat.

“I do not have the finances to afford cars and four-wheelers and for most of my campaigning, I prefer my bicycle. I am ready to take help of my well-wishers and friends who seeing my campaigning in the heat have planned to help me in arranging four-wheelers for going long distances,” said Mahesh Bando who was posted in Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan as an army tank trainer.

Mahesh, who claims to cycle over 15km a day while interacting with people and making them aware of his candidature, has not yet filed his nomination.

“I will be filing nomination on April 30 (the last day of filing nomination for Chatra is May 3). However, I interact with people and discuss their issues. Most of the people knew me as a human rights activist as I have been raising their issues for a long time. They know me by name and the poll symbol is not an issue,” said Mahesh.

He is not afraid of losing his deposit in the poll. “I am not afraid of losing the election. My sole objective to contest the poll is to raise an issue which has been ignored by all the mainstream parties.”

He claims that over seven lakh populace in the Chatra Lok Sabha seat have been residing in gair-majrua land (non-agriculture government land) for more than six decades. However, the government is threatening to evacuate them for infrastructure projects without paying compensation or rehabilitation.

“These people have been residing in these land and set up settlements for over six decades. They have documents of paying land rents to the government till 2014. However, for infrastructure projects, they are being threatened to evacuate without paying any compensation or rehabilitation. All the mainstream parties (BJP and INDIA bloc) have ignored these issues,” alleges Mahesh. He claims that the matter came to the fore two years ago when lakhs of people of over 60 villages faced the threat of evacuation due to the Bharatmala Highway project.

The government had surveyed 68 villages for land acquisition two years ago for the central government Benaras-Calcutta Expressway project under Bharatmala Pariyojana. The proposed 610km six-lane expressway estimated to come up at an investment of Rs 2,500 crore will connect Benaras with Ranchi and Calcutta.