'Crowd managers' earn between Rs 10 lakh to a crore by supplying paid workers to political parties. Vivek Sabnis reports on the lucrative trend

Not all the smiling people you see flauntingu00a0 party badges at polling information boothsu00a0 today may be the loyal party workers they appear to be. Chances are, the cheerful individuals urging you to vote for a particular party are people whose political affiliations are decided by who hires them for the day.u00a0u00a0u00a0
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Some 'crowd managers' or the entrepreneurs, who supply such people for a fee ranging from Rs 100 to Rs 1,000 per individual, per day, will have earned as much as Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore by the timeu00a0 the
elections are over.

"While no party will admit that they use paid workers to get work done, the use of crowd managers is quite widespread. We make some seriously good money during the elections," admitted Abhishek Pawar, a young crowd manager from Sadashiv Peth.

"Political parties give as much as Rs 1,000 per day for attending to citizens at a polling information booth. I don't see why I should not benefit from it. It will be five years before we have another Lok Sabha election," added Pawar. Amar Gaikwad (name changed), another crowd manager, said "All we are interested in is the payment. We will work for anyone who pays."

Neelesh Vairat, a BJP worker at Kasba Peth area, said his party did not use paid party workers. "We do get fed, but we are not paid. We are in the middle of distributing 14,000 election slips to the voters in our area, and we expect nothing in return. However, it is true that political parties use paid workers to canvass for them during the elections," said Vairat.

Both Dr Satish Desai, the spokesperson for the Congress candidate Suresh Kalmadi, as well as Yogesh Gogawale, the general secretary of the BJP city unit, denied that paid workers were used for campaigning. "We do provide snacks because they are on the field for the entire day," explained Desai.

In the Maval Lok Sabha constituency, a group of college-going youngsters were paid Rs 500 each per day to perform a street play. One of the students admitted that he had earned Rs 10,000 from staging the play repeatedly at different venues in the last 20 days.