Open Letter to Elected Representatives

Dear Elected Representatives,

I know all your birth dates by now and I surely do not want to wish you on your birthday’s ever!  I also know that you wish your voters on every possible occasion even though it makes no real difference to their lives nor you have made any sincere effort to make a difference to their lives!

Yes you and your party workers have successfully made Bengaluru Ugly with all those Banners, Hoardings and Posters, which to my guess are mostly unpaid and unauthorized. 

Since you have set the trend, millions have followed you, with posters that offer PAN Cards, Passports, PG Accommodation, Cars, Cabs, Houses, Training, Sex, Cook, Food, Yoga, DL, Movies etc are pasted on every single Wall, Flyover, Tree, Fence, Divider, Electric Poles, Gates and any other place that is still left!

What is more amusing and shameful is that most of the Bengaluru MLA’s and Corporators are from BJP, PM Modi who heads the BJP Govt in the centre passionately and eloquently speaks about Swacch Bharat. PM Modi has been asking people to clean the Roads, Locality, City, State, Country, and all you do is make the city of Bengaluru Ugly, Dirty and Filthy every day and disrespecting the PM who is from your own party!

Thanks to the BBMP, the city is infamously christened as ‘Garbage City’ and you people are busy adding and other tag of ‘Ugly City’. A rap on BBMP knuckles by Courts and Lokayukta has made no difference; BBMP has shown no will or spine and they continue to follow the diktats of you and your ever aggressive party workers. The city not just getting uglier by the hour but is losing revenue, as none of you pay for erecting up those horrendous Banners, Hoardings and Posters.

Even at a small fee of Rs1 per Banner/Hoarding/Poster per day would mean cores of revenue that BBMP is losing, additionally BBMP ends up using tax payers money to remove/clean/dispose them. Those ridiculous flex banners you proudly display your photos on cannot be recycled; and it ends up in the landfills creating few more Mandurs!

Spare a thought, the city is already suffering from air pollution, water pollution, garbage, noise pollution, traffic jams, pot holes. Think about it, if I am stuck in a traffic jam and all I get to see are faces of you and your 30 odd party workers almost mocking at my fate, and follow me all through the lane till I turn to the next road, sadly only to see one more of your kind.

Recently, I spotted a old lady who tearing one of your big poster from the frame, I asked her if she was angry with the politician, she smiled and replied ‘no, the only good thing is that I can use these poster to cover my toilet which is in open’, alas you have helped some one!

Stop making a mockery of the system using your political forces, you have wiped-off the revenues for BBMP and are using the tax payer’s money to clean up your mess. Buckle up the city is struggling to survive; spare the city from your Posters, Banners, Hoardings and the Public Nuisance you are indulging in. Also save self from future public humiliation, because days are not far when people have to pee and poo on your banners and posters!

City of Bengaluru needs a break, needs a break from your ‘Political Litter’!

- Kavitha Reddy