CHENNAI: After savouring the poll victory in the 2011 elections, CPM’s Maduravoyal MLA Bheem Rao now has and unenviable task ahead of him — improving the basic amenities in his constituency.
Maduravoyal hardly has any motorable roads, dustbins, potable water and is always flooded during the monsoon days.
Since 1991, the constituency has been neglected. “The MLAs have failed to do much to improve the lot of the people and now I have a difficult task cut out of me,” said the 52-year-old who defeated PMK candidate K Selvam by about 24,000 votes.
Rao’s candidacy was supported by people of the constituency who pitched in with voluntary contributions, both in cash and kind, to support his election campaign. So the sense of responsibility weighs heavy on Rao who says his first task is to provide good roads for the constituency.
The first-time MLA, a Dalit who won from a general seat, joined Democratic Youth Federation of India in 1983, has worked his way up over the past 27 years and ran his campaign from a thatched hut with a small television and few chairs, near an unmetalled road in Nerkundram’s CDN Nagar.
Interestingly, about 75 per cent of property in his constituency belongs to the Tamil Nadu Housing Board and the Pachiayappa’s Trust with some falling under the Urban Land Ceiling Act so residents in the area hardly have any patta.
“My next job is to provide people with patta besides using the redundant water-bodies to provide houses and at the same time to protect the existing water bodies,” says Bheem Rao, who has studied up to Class 10.
He also has plans to open a public health centre in Nerkundram, as he says the poor are solely dependent on the Ponneri Health Centre for healthcare.
Nerkundram, formerly part of the Villivakam constituency, has had Communist MLAs before — V P Chintan represented the constituency in 1985 and W R Varadarajan in 1989. Bheem Rao is the first CPM MLA after delimitation of the constituency.
Attributing the Left’s defeat in West Bengal to the party’s failure to connect with the people, Bheem Rao humbly said, “I will also be removed if I fail.”