Rampur: If you are looking for Dr Tanveer Ahmad, the BSP candidate from Rampur constituency of Uttar Pradesh you might be taken to his twin brother also a doctor, Mahmood Ali, and get to hear, “No difference, ek hi baat hai inse hi baat kar lijiye.” (You can speak to him, it is the same thing).
Their stark similarity in the way they look, style their hair and clothes has come in handy for political purpose in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.
While one stays indoors for meetings with the party workers, the other goes door to door for campaigning. If one is busy in the rural, the other manages the city area, one might speak to print media, the other faces the camera for television. That’s how the division of labour is taking place between the twin brothers.
Zameer Maulana from the Machchli Bazaar area said with a laugh, “Rampur is seeing its own Ram aur Shyam or Seeta aur Geeta with the two of them hopping on and off from different alleys of the city. If I tell someone doctor sahib was here, he counters me saying ‘no, he is in the meeting, If Ali doesn’t tell us we don’t get to know who it is.”
“Right now my brother is busy in the meetings and I am occupied with the door to door campaigns. People look at me and say doctor sa’ab aagaye because Ahmed is popularly called doctor sa’ab and since I am a radiologist some of them thank me for conducting the ultrasound on them. They get confused but on such occasions I prefer to keep quiet. I move out after addressing the crowd. While campaigning we are also enjoying the confusion, not many get to know who is who! He is my photocopy.”
Locals think that in the second innings the BSP candidate, Ahmad has acquired political finesse and will give a tough fight to Azam Khan, the SP candidate from Rampur this time in UP polls. Rampur goes to polls in second phase of elections and has five constituencies – Rampur, Milakshabar, Bilaspur, Swar Tanda, Chamraua.
Ahmad and Ali were born and brought up in Rampur, went to the same school and college. The only time they headed for separation was when they got admissions in different medical colleges of Gorakhpur and Kanpur. That is when their late father Ahmad Ali Khan protested and got them in one college, “He came to Kanpur and spoke to the administration requesting that the two of us should be made to study together in one college otherwise it would get difficult for him to manage,” added Ali.
Shoeb Khan, a local leader who has been supporting Ahmad’s political ambitions for long, represented Ahmad for Amar Singh’s Lok Manch.
“Their clinic is opposite Azam Khan’s party office, lot of things happened between them – cycles were found punctured and parking became an issue since the road was quite narrow for too many vehicles to be parked. – Unhappy with this and Azam Khan’s work in Rampur they decided to enter politics,” he said and added, “There is not much difference between the two, only of few kilos, one is heavier than the other. But when the issue of development is defining their politics how does it matter who is Ali or who is Ahmad.”(N18)
