Tejasvi Surya two hours late for school reunion

As Tejasvi Surya, Bangalore South BJP candidate, came running to his alma mater Sri Kumaran Children’s Home, the thinning crowd at the venue had waited for almost two hours since 7 pm.

With just a couple of minutes of campaign time left before the model code of conduct kicked in at 9 pm, the eager crowd only got a tiny bit of Surya’s speech before the flying squad blared sirens over a microphone to disperse the crowd.

After appearing three minutes before 9 pm, Surya had an argument with election officials. As the officials sounded an alert, he argued with officials and spoke for five more minutes before the officials could intervene.

While some people — especially senior citizens — were furious as they waited for the youth leader, the youngsters in the crowd, who formed the majority, kept the ‘josh’ high. “How can we wait standing like this, even for him?” groaned a senior citizen as organisers of the event announced that Surya was on his way for the fourth time. The organisers had to project the live location of Surya at around 8.50 pm to convince the gathering that Surya was finally coming.

Since 7 pm, Surya’s teachers, classmates and even his mother kept the crowd engaged. Surya was elected as the school’s head boy.

Declaring him as her “favourite student ever”, his class 10 maths teacher Sharmila K Murthy was confident that he will be the next Prime Minister. Sheela Mukund, Surya’s English teacher recalled a “young and overconfident” boy who took part in debates. “I advised him once to listen to what his opponents say in debates carefully, before countering their points,” she said.

Apeksha Patel, a doctor two years his junior at school said: “We have known him even before he contested elections in school.” Her friend, Varsha Shivakumar, also echoed the same sentiment, recalling how Surya had wanted to be India’s President when he was in school.

Surya’s supporters, however, were reluctant to comment recent accusations against their candidate. When asked about his ‘misogynistic’ tweets, Varsha said he might not have meant it.

His Kannada teacher, Mohan S, termed these accusations as “politically motivated by opponents to prevent a 28-year-old friend from growing in politics”.