Sanjay Kumar with his chhola-bhatura cart. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, March 18: Standing next to his chhola-bhatura cart ladling out the steaming hot snack to hungry customers, Sanjay Kumar seems an unlikely election candidate.

He flashes the self-conscious smile of someone not used to speaking to a journalist, and despite his towering six-foot frame, is little more than a speck in the rush of humans and vehicles at the busy Okhla road junction.

The 28-year-old symbolises the aspirations of a unique urban political movement that is silently spreading through Delhi — from Dwarka in the west to Defence Colony in the south.

Pitted against each other in the past, residents from economically well-off sections of the capital are joining hands with those from slum clusters and resettlement colonies to take on established political parties. And joining them is a group of IITians who have already tested election waters in the recent Mumbai municipal polls.

They will together field candidates selected by residents of colonies for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi polls on April 4.

“The problems we face are the same. There is now a realisation that we need to stand next to each other,” said Air Commodore (retd) Krishan Mitroo, an active member of the Panchsheel Colony residents’ welfare association (RWA).

RWAs and slums across the city are meeting ordinary residents of their localities to select the candidates. Sanjay was selected by some 200 residents of south Delhi’s Govind Puri at one such meeting.

Jan Pratinidhi Manch, the forum of citizens’ groups spearheading the movement, in its charter blames the practice of candidates “buying tickets” as one of the reasons for increasing political corruption.

“Candidates spend lakhs of rupees for a party ticket, and on winning the election naturally want to recover the amount and then earn profits on their investment,” says Bijju Nayak, co-ordinator for the manch.

Nayak also suggests another reason for politicians side-stepping their voters’ concerns — candidates from political parties often suffer from pressure to follow the party diktat, neglecting the demands of the people.

The manch, on the other hand, is suggesting that candidates selected by popular vote — like Sanjay — fight the elections with money collected in the form of donations from the electorate itself.

“Sanjay will not be spending a penny from his pocket. He will have to go from house to house collecting donation to fund his campaign,” said Pankaj Gupta, a Gurgaon-based software professional.

Candidates will have to sign two affidavits — declaring they will regularly display details of expenditure from the funds meant for the ward’s development, and agreeing to resign later if voters want them to.

“The candidate will sign an affidavit agreeing to resign at any stage during his elected tenure if a majority of those who donated money, even Re 1, towards the campaign want him to,” said Nayak.

Sanjay Sharma, an IIT-Banaras Hindu University alumnus now teaching in an engineering college in Noida, says he is excited about working with his namesake from a more modest background.

Sharma and other IITians have formed the Bharat Punarnirman Dal that contested three seats on their own in Mumbai. They lost, but the experience has convinced Sharma that “people want a change”.

“We want to give people an option to vote for their own candidate, not just be forced to choose between candidates selected by parties for considerations of their own,” sums up Nayak.