'we have MP's like this too!'
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From the pages of 'The Hindu"
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A  tribute to  
  Com.ARUN KUMAR ROY.
 
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  A.K.ROY,
   Marxist Coordination Committee candidate,
   Dhanbad LokSabha seat
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      A misfit in the present political milieu, it is people like him
 that keep democracy ticking. Toil in the Dhanbad coal belt  has chiseled him
into a worthy diamond, kindling a ray of hope among the people of the area.
 
      A.K.ROY  , 69, who is contesting for the ninth time from a seat
 he has represented   thrice earlier, is a man with a difference. 
A stickler for principles, he was expelled from the CPI(M) and 
formed his own party, the Janwadi Kisan Sangram Samithi.
He later converted it into the Marxist Coordination Committee in 1970s.
 
      This firebrand revolutionary began life as a chemical engineer
 in a company where he was dismissed from service for supporting 
a workers' strike in 1966-67.He then entered politics.
 
     For over three decades, he has been running the MCC from 
a one-room office with an old table and two wooden chairs, 
apart from books and other reading material.
    
     A paragon of simplicity, Mr.Roy, cleans his office and home himself daily
 before stepping out in a pajama and kurta, to dress up the lives 
of the people who work in the collieries, currently facing 
the threat of privatisation. " Privatisation is no answer to 
the ailing coal industry. If it had been so, 
it would not have been nationalized in the first place".
 
     Mr.Roy owns no car despite having been an MP thrice 
and MLA on as many occasions. He walks a lot, 
covering about 20 miles a day.
"People move on foot even today. 
Technology is no supplant. We face no difficulty.
 You cannot be divorced from ground realities."
 
     He sleeps on a mat and his staple food is 'sattu'. 
Yet this fragile man has it in him to pressure the coal mafia 
into conceding  the miners' due. His struggles have taken him 
to jail four times, including the one during JP movement of 1975
 when he was the first to resign from the Bihar assembly.
 In the aftermath of Emergency, he successfully contested 
in the LokSabha elections ,from behind the bars.
 

     This time, he says, the situation is in his favour 
in a triangular contest and banks on the support of 25000
odd members of the Colliery Kamgar union. 
 
     Mr.Roy's  election symbol is  a book, perhaps 
very apt for the man who has Rs.26,000  in his bank account. 
He owns nothing else.
He was the lone voice stalling the Rajiv Gandhi proposal 
for increasing the salary and perks of MP's in the LokSabha.
 
      In true spirit, Mr.Roy's pension as former MP goes straight
 to the President's Relief fund. He does not avail of any of the facilities 
due to him as a former MP and lives on his own....rather, on what 
his comrades make available,including his clothes.
 He may not be a Mahathma Gandhi, but Mr.Roy's life also is devoted to the masses.
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