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Bengaluru: In football-crazy Kerala, candidates of the Lok Sabha election seem to have taken a page out of the Japanese book of manners, which made news last year after fans stayed back to clean up the stadium after a World Cup game, while the team spruced up their dressing room to leave it spotless after they were booted out.

Now that all of Kerala’s 20 Lok Sabha seats have voted, a few candidates in the fray have launched campaigns to remove the promotional material plastered across the state in the run-up to the election.

From posters and buntings to flex boards and other campaign material, they are all being taken down.

Union Tourism Minister K.J. Alphons, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Ernakulam, told ThePrint that he had instructed booth-level workers to finish the cleaning exercise by Sunday.

“My district presidents are ensuring that all the posters are taken down,” he said. “The walls that were painted were cleaned out. I did not have many posters as my candidacy was announced late. But I strongly believe that defacing the city or the country during elections is very wrong.”

His rival candidate, P. Rajeev of the Left Democratic Front, has started a WhatsApp group with the help of party supporters to start a campaign called ‘Let’s Clean Ernakulam’.

Rajeev said he had asked his supporters to remove all posters and whitewash the walls painted with campaign material by 30 April.

“I am overwhelmed by the response, which was almost immediate. As much as 70 per cent of the work has been completed,” he added.

“As citizens, it is our responsibility to keep our city clean and, what better way than to start in your own backyard,” Rajeev said.

Also read: Nair pride, Sabarimala & elitism — BJP’s recipe to wrest Kerala capital from Shashi Tharoor

‘Need a law against defacement’

Campaign seasons around the country are marked by a proliferation of publicity material, with posters, party slogans and calls to vote for certain candidates popping up everywhere. Compound walls of private homes are often used to paint the name and symbol of favoured candidates, removing which then becomes the responsibility of house owners.

“This time, we have ensured all this is done on a war footing,” said Shravan P., a booth worker of the Congress from Ernakulam, where Hibi Eden is the party’s candidate.

Sources in the state Congress said they had also received suggestions to preserve party flags, hoardings and election material which could be put to use in states that are yet to go to the polls.

Meanwhile, the BJP candidate for Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram, Kummanam Rajasekharan, is recycling the dozens of shawls he received on the campaign trail to fashion household items for distribution among the needy.

“During the campaign, people would honour him with shawls and, on average, he received close to 100 shawls a day. Now we have close to 1 lakh shawls,” said R. Sandeep Ramesh, the BJP state committee member and part of the former Mizoram governor’s team.

“As party workers, we are collecting them and converting them into household products such as cloth bags, towels and handkerchiefs,” he added. “It will also encourage people to become eco-friendly.”

Talking to ThePrint, Union minister Alphons said there should be a law against such defacement of property.

“There should be a central regulation disallowing posters anywhere. Campaigns or advertisements can be carried out through the TV, radio,” he added.

Also read: Support for Sabarimala protests will win BJP 3 of Kerala’s 20 seats, says Pandalam royal



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