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Independent to fight 159th election against Modi

K. Padmarajan, who has contested a record number of 158 elections so far, rightly calls himself the ‘All-India Election King’, though he has never emerged triumphant even once.

The 55-year-old Tamil Nadu resident has now filed his nomination papers for the 159th time as an independent candidate for the Lok Sabha polls from Vadodara in central Gujarat from where Chief Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is also contesting.

But Padmarajan, a tyre dealer, has not thrown his hat into the ring to defeat Modi. Well, he says he only wants to prove that even a common man can take on the high and mighty, and, more importantly, to set a world record.

Since 1988, the ‘election king’ has lost all his deposit money amounting to Rs1.2 million and once again this time paid Rs25,000 as deposit at Vadodara. He cannot speak in Hindi or English but has challenged heavyweights like M. Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha, A.K. Anthony, P.V. Narasimha Rao, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, K.R. Narayanan, S.M. Krishna, Manmohan Singh (in the Rajya Sabha) and Pranab Mukherjee in assembly, Parliamentary and presidential polls.

“I do not have a political motive in contesting from Vadodara. I just want to contest against Modi and my aim is to find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. I only take on VIPs as a common man. I will keep fighting elections all my life,” Padmarajan told Khaleej Times through a Tamil translator.