(Representative image)

LUCKNOW: Making a mockery of the electoral set up, a little known Bahujan Vikas Party has announced a donkey to be its CM face and named him ‘ Gardabh Singh Yadav ’. The party also plans to get the animal marched from Burlington Crossing to the DM’s office in Lucknow to file its nomination papers from Lucknow Cantt assembly constituency on Monday.

BVP national president Keshav Chandra said their objective was to fight against the electoral system that allows inefficient and tainted candidates to be fielded by political parties. “For us, a donkey is the most suitable candidate as it never feels the burden of work and does not even require education to frame law,”' he said, sarcastically.

In Sanskrit, Gardabh means donkey. Chandra said that there was a consensus in his party to name the animal that way. He said he was once a close associate of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and general secretary of Janata Party. The party’s letter-head too cites Jayaprakash Narayan, along with BR Ambedkar and former President APJ Abdul Kalam as its icons.

“Having been in politics for more than 30 years, I have not seen this kind of deterioration in the political set up,’’ he claimed. Chandra had contested Lok Sabha elections from Deoria parliamentary seat in 1989 and then in assembly elections from the same district. On both occasions, his deposits got forfeited. In October last year, he formed the BVP and got ‘chappal’ as his party’s election symbol.

