Date:10/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/10/stories/2008081059390400.htm

New Delhi

Kids to take Gandhi’s message to Parliament

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Children from ten schools of Delhi and the rest of the National Capital Region will march towards Parliament here on Monday to present “five hundred pledges” to express their anguish at the recent “cash for votes” controversy in the Lok Sabha.

To strengthen parliamentary democracy in the country, the students from Class X to Class XII will congregate at Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti and then take out a silent Gandhian procession waving the National Tricolour and holding aloft portraits of the Father of the Nation. They would also be clutching 144 replicas of the 144 columns of Parliament House to show that the future of the country is safe in their hands. Later the students, who are participating in “Taking children to Gandhi” programme, would meet Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to emphasise that parliamentary democracy in the country needs to be strengthened at all cost and youngsters would be the vanguard of the movement for change. According to the programme convener, Suhas Borker, the students will hand over the “five hundred pledges” and Gandhi’s famous quote in Hindi and English: “Whenever you are in doubt… recall the face of the poorest and the weakest ….”, so that the message may be prominently displayed in the House and what happened recently is never repeated.

Stating that the students were traumatised by the recent “cash for votes” controversy in Parliament, Mr. Borker said they feel that positive action has to replace cynicism.