Come on Anna, Delhi is with you!

Don’t lose your heart, Delhi. Yes, Anna is going to be in Mumbai this time. But you can very much be with him at Jantar Mantar. Team Anna and a battery of more than 100 volunteers are working day and night to make sure that the spirit of Delhi is not dampened just because Anna will be in Maharashtra where he claims to have taken six wickets (before he became the Anna we know). “We want to recreate the kind of numbers (crowd) and mood we witnessed at Ramlila ground where Anna’s fast lasted for 12 days in August,” said Praveen, a volunteer with IAC, the group managing the campaign. [caption id=“attachment_164106” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] During the agitation at Ramlila ground, the turn out had crossed 20,000 on weekends. Since the tabling of the Lokpal Bill in Parliament, Praveen has been mobilising people in Delhi. “We started the movement. Now we know that the government has betrayed us. If we discontinue the protest at this stage, citizens will never support any such movement in future,”  he said. “The Mother India urges her sons and daughters to come on the streets to protest against corrupt govt and its dhokpal. Join the protest march from AIIMS to IIT gate at 5 pm on 24th December,” read the sms from one of the volunteers. Team Anna is trying to rope in some celebrities to maintain the heat in Delhi as it will be a three-day affair. There is also a possibility of one of the key members holding the command in the national capital. Asmita, the theatre group, is already conducting at least four street plays daily in various parts of the city. The last play will be followed by a mashaal rally where volunteers will cover the neighbourhood conveying what is wrong in the government’s version of Lokpal bill. There are plans to install LCD screens at Jantar Mantar to relay live telecast from the venue of the fast in Mumbai. Debates of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha will also be replayed so that people know the stand of various political parties on the issue. “The ground work is on. We are distributing pamphlets in colleges and members of resident welfare associatios and market associations,” said Aswathi Murlidharan, member, IAC. That the warm-up to the next round has begun can be gauged from the fact that more than 9,000 people have got themselves registered for the jail bharo agitation through the website www.jailchalo.com. “B a Freedom fighter agnst corruption Register for Jail bharo. Sms to 575758 or call 07303150500,” Kiran Bedi tweeted on Friday. This is the first time since the launch of his protest for Lokpal that Anna Hazare will be observing a fast in Mumbai. Team Ana has filed a writ petition in a Mumbai court demanding for a waiver to use the MMRDA ground that can accommodate around one lakh people.  This, after the authorities said they would charge Rs 19 lakh for five days. As such, the fast of the next venue is Azad Maidan, smaller than the MMRDA ground. Azad maidan has a capacity of 5,000 people.