 "Kerala civic body polls witness success of a corporate")
Twenty20, the CSR arm of the Rs 1,200 crore Anna-Kitex Group of companies, has seen 17 out of the 19 candidates it fielded in the Panchayat elections winning the seats. The panchayat, which has been said to be a bastion of Indian National Congress in the past, has seen the major parties tumbling at the altar of the Twenty20 candidates. Eleven out of the 19 candidates are women.
Sabu Jacob, managing director of Anna-Kitex Group is also the chief co-ordinator of Twenty20. According to a Kitex employee who has been working in Twenty20 said that the CSR movement ventured into contesting in the election since its various projects were delayed or discouraged by the Congress-led panchayat earlier and thought about having its own representation.
The aim is to make the Panchayat number one among the 2,72,000 panchayats in the country by the year 2020. The CSR initiative have around 250 members in every ward and they together came up to select the candidates, who contested in the election as independent candidates. It has also won two out of the three block panchayat seats in which it contested.
However, the other parties who were contesting the election alleged that the move is to get a free reign in the area in order to get various approvals from the Panchayat.
Twenty20 is an endeavour to provide permanent employment and thereby regular income to its seven thousand employees, to actively involve them in social welfare activities in the panchayat, says the company.
"Twenty20 is a movement designed and powered by the company wherein it has joined hands with residents and community leaders to work towards realising the dream of becoming the No 1 County in the country in terms of standard of living of its residents by working on aspects like water availability, food security, agricultural self-dependence, electrification of rural households and fight against corruption. The company has earmarked a specific amount of money for this purpose," the company said.