Blind candidate hopes to create record

Independent candidate from Gopalpur assembly constituency Debasish Paramanik, a blind man, hopes to get into the record books by becoming perhaps the first person in the country to be elected. 

Twenty-six-year-old Pramanik, a tabla player by profession, depends entirely on door-to-door campaign and does not use a vehicle to carry him through the villages of his constituency in Ganjam district. 

Neither does he use any loudspeker to canvass for votes. The only help he gets is from his two trusted friends who take him around and give him the feedback.  "I hope the voters in my constituency will make a history by electing a blind person from their constituency," Paramanik said.

Asked what drove him to contest election, Pramanik, secretary of the Ganjam District Blind Association, said, "I am unable to see the real picture of society, but I can visualise the miseries and sufferings of the poor people. So I thought of doing something for them." 

His candidature has also got moral support from the National Fderation of Blind, Orissa unit, he claimed.

Paramanik appealed to the voters to support his cause of doing something for the disabled by donating Re one each  to meet his travel and other expenses.

"I am receiving good response everywhere in the constituency and the general public are generously donating the amount without any hesitation," he said.

Paramanik starts his day at eight in the morning and ends at nine in the evening, taking his only time off during lunch taken at the residence of any one of the voters.

"I have already covered most of the villages, dominated by fishermen," he said.

When asked whther being blind ever caused any sense of loss to him, he replied, "Not particularly, but I wish my parents were not poor! I was not blind at birth. I had developed a problem in the eye when I was 12 or 15 which was not corrected because of my parents' poverty."