Sovan to unfurl 591-metre-long Trinamool 'flag'

KOLKATA: Talk about flagging the voters' attention. Kolkata's diminutive but portly Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, who is also Trinamool Congress candidate from Behala (East), plans to unfurl what would easily be this election season's longest flag.
A 591 metre (1939 feet) long 'flag'—and it may exceed this length, says the Mayor proudly—of the Trinamool Congress will be strung along Diamond Harbour Road that's part of the constituency. Chatterjee says the brainwave hit him when a well-known readymade garments dealer told him about a bale of white cloth lying unused at a Garden Reach storehouse. Chatterjee bought the material immediately and got the cloth dyed in green and saffron before getting an artist to paint the Trinamool's symbol—two flowers in a bed of grass—on it.
Chatterjee, however, is strangely secretive about this. He won't say reveal the exact sport where the flag will be strung. "It will be seen on Diamond Harbour Road very soon. I can say this much," Chatterjee said on Tuesday. And he also won't say how much this long 'flag' has cost him. Estimates are that the cost of the material, and the dyeing and printing, would have left his campaign coffers poorer by at least one lakh Rupees. A scrutiny of his election expenses he'll file will reveal the actual cost.
This apart, the mayor has thought up other ways to reach out to his electorate. "We will install LCD television sets in some important wards across the constituency for common voters who will get to know the achievements of the Trinamool Congress run Kolkata Municipal Corporation and failures of the Left Front government which has been ruling the state for past 34 years," a close aide of Chatterjee who is one of his campaign managers said. A section of Trinamool Congress supporters want the Trinamool Congress leadership to run entertainment programmes through these LCD TVs for the common voters of the constituency. All this is sure to cost a pile.
As of now, the Mayor is banking heavily on 'didi's' image as railway minister to appeal to the electorate to vote for change. A pickup truck fitted with a giant LCD screen on which clips of Mamata Banerjee's speeches—portions of her Railway budget speech and other public speeches she has made outlining her plans for Bengal—are screened has been doing the rounds of the constituency. "We all bank on Mamatadi's image and get extra mileage out of it," Chatterjee said, claiming that the mobile van has been a huge success in his Assembly constituency. And he's hoping that his serpentine flag and LCD screens would translate into votes for him.