Volunteers bury the hatchet, share food and friendly banter

We campaigned aggressively against each other, but we are all friends at the end of the day. We will have a small gettogether in our locality in the evening.

The battle may have been bitter in the days preceding the Delhi municipal polls, but when the polling agents and volunteers of rival political parties assembled outside polling booths on Sunday, many of them already appeared to have buried the hatchet.

“We campaigned aggressively against each other, but we are all friends at the end of the day. We will have a small get-together in our locality in the evening,” said Veer Pal, a BSP volunteer in Karol Bagh.

Some of them indulged in friendly banter as they moved from their own counters to their rivals’. “We taught him a lesson in UP polls and we are defeating him in Delhi. But we are all brothers,” said BJP volunteer Rajpal Singh, as he stood arms in arms with the BSP volunteer and a Congress polling agent.

In Tilak Nagar, two brothers, Harmeet and Gurpreet, had campaigned for Congress and AAP respectively, but on Sunday they sipped tea with each other outside a polling station. “We returned to the same house every day and would enter into heated arguments. But today it ends,” said Gurpreet.

In Patel Nagar, volunteers of rival parties shared their lunch with each other. “Our culture has not taught us to eat while our brothers watch. We respect each other’s decision to differ politically,” said Parvesh Rana, an AAP volunteer.

However, in Okhla, a Swaraj India volunteer was allegedly beaten by an AAP agent for enquiring about his party table, police said. The complainant, Abhay Kumar, was injured in his face and AAP’s agent, Amit Vidhur, has been booked for causing hurt, said police.