Lok Sabha 2014: Gul Panag campaigns in Chandigarh's rural areas

Aam Aadmi Party candidate Gul Panag today campaigned in the Union territory's rural areas for the April 10 parliamentary election and interacted with the villagers. The 35-year-old former Miss India spent the first half of the day in village Malloya here.

She keenly listened to the villagers, some of whom conveyed their anguish over the alleged poor state of government medical facilities in the village. 

Gul campaigned door-to-door in the Gwala colony near Malloya.

Interacting with the people, Gul said that healthcare, education and sanitation will form the focal points of her development agenda for Chandigarh. "My vision for the villages in Chandigarh is to see them developed and transformed into mini-townships as compared to their current state of being under-developed and grossly neglected areas of the city," she said.

In the evening, she held a women's meeting in Sector 27 here. "The women need to have an independent voice and to express it with their vote, because without that, society cannot change and the abuse against women will continue," she said.

AAP fielded Gul Panag after Savita Bhatti, wife of late satirist Jaspal Bhatti opted out of the race. The BSP has fielded its woman councillor, Jannat Jahan (34).

Prominent among those who are pitted against Panag include Congress' sitting MP and former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal (65) and BJP's Kirron Kher. Meanwhile, Kher spent some time in Chandigarh's Industrial Area, where she had an interaction with the city's industrialists and listened to the problems faced by them. 

Kher was accompanied by former MP Satya Pal Jain and Chandigarh BJP president Sanjay Tandon.