CHENNAI: The recent election saw the feverish pitch of a number of campaigns named NaMo, after the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. One of these schemes, the NaMo fish stall, is set to emerge into a new phase bereft of the poll fever. The people behind the scheme are set to kick off this new phase by distributing 200 kg of fresh fish to 200 people for free even as the new government takes oath in Delhi.
Along with NaMo tea stalls and NaMo street corner talks, the NaMo fish stalls had been launched as a poll campaign. The BJP’s fishermen wing is now set to turn it into a business platform, which it claims can deliver cheaper fish to consumers straight from fishermen by eliminating the middlemen.
“The price of the fish bought through the NaMo fish stalls are likely to be around 20 per cent cheaper than the open market. At present, there are about five middlemen and agents between the fisherman and the consumer. We will achieve the reduced price by cutting them out,” says S Satish Kumar, State president of the BJP’s fishermen wing.
He says there are at present 500 BJP partymen from the fishing trade in Chennai, Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts alone, and that this would expand to well over 2,000 fishermen when the programme is expanded across the State.