NEW DELHI: Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the opposition vice presidential candidate, plans post card diplomacy as part of his campaign to reach out to 785 MPs.
Gandhi, in order to give a personal touch to his campaign for the VP elections scheduled August 5, will send post cards to all MPs who will vote in the elections for the post, which is the second highest constitutional office in the country.
Opposition leaders were all for it when Gandhi presented the idea. One of the leaders of the opposition parties even asked his aide to buy 1,000 post cards and by Tuesday afternoon all were bought from the post office closest to Parliament — GPO, Gol Market.
Besides, Gandhi will also send emails and letters to all MPs. A video message will also be recorded and it will accompany the emails to members of both houses of Parliament.
“Gandhi was interested in giving a personal touch to the campaign and he proposed to send post cards to all MPs. The post cards will broadly have bullet-point kind of content highlighting issues while the emails and letters will have his detailed views on various issues,” said a leader of the opposition.
Gandhi, after filing his nomination for the VP election left for Chennai. He is likely to return to Delhi on August 4 and will personally reach out to MPs in Parliament. When asked about not having enough numbers, Gandhi said: “Arithmetic is about numbers, philosophy is about principles and I choose to fight on principle.”
On the Shiv Sena’s attack on him for petitioning the President to save Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon, Gandhi said, “Shiv Sena is doing its duty with dedication... I feel that the death penalty and capital punishment belong to the medieval ages. Death penalty is wrong and this is my principle.” He said he had also written a similar petition for Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav, facing death sentence in Pakistan.