source<\/a><\/p>\nTHE first thing MIC central working committee member T. Mohan did when he was informed that he would be contesting in the Batu Caves state constituency was to climb the 272 steps to the Hindu temple to pay his obeisance. He felt that performing prayers at the temple located at the peak of Batu Caves last Sunday was necessary because he wanted divine grace to guide him through the battle. Furthermore, the most outstanding landmark in the constituency is Batu Caves.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old businessman, who holds a diploma in electrical engineering, will replace incumbent V. Jegarasah, a two-term representative. Mohan is the managing director of PES group of companies, which has five subsidiaries involved in logistics and capital investments.<\/p>\n
Mohan said that although he was a new face, people were familiar with him owing to the wide publicity he had received in the media for the public appeals he had made to raise funds and resolve the woes of the poor and needy. Within the community, he is known as the Indian version of MCA’s Datuk Micheal Chong who highlights the problems of the people to the media and agencies concerned and seeks redress.<\/p>\n
“I know what hardship is all about because my father was a taxi driver and he worked from 6am till past midnight daily to support my family of four. I have experienced and tasted it and now I’m ready to serve and free people from such difficulties,” Mohan, the youngest MIC candidate in this general election, said.<\/p>\n
Mohan had set up a special task force to help poor Indians without identity cards and birth certificates seven years ago. He has two fulltime workers to handle their applications and, so far, they have received 2,200 applications.<\/p>\n
The MIC Youth social and welfare bureau chief also has a meet the people session weekly at his office.<\/p>\n
The Batu Caves constituency gives an impression that it is Indian dominated owing to the 1 million people who gather for the Thaipusan festival there annually but it is not. The Batu Caves state constituency has 17,238 voters and comes under the Umno-held Gombak parliamentary seat.<\/p>\n
Batu Caves is a predominantly Malay-majority seat (59.5%) with Chinese making up of 16.2% and Indians 23.6%.In the 2004 general election, Jegarasah defeated Kamarul Baharin Abas of the PKR with a majority of 1,781 votes. In 1999, he beat PKR’s Razali Ismail by 449 votes.<\/p>\n
Mohan knows it is going to be tough owing to the issues that surround the constituency but he is willing to take up the challenge because he has a good track record. He has met Umno, MCA and MIC members in the constituency over the past few days and they have welcomed him saying that he is young and would be able to serve them better.<\/p>\n
However, even before his name was announced, Batu Caves MIC members had expressed unhappiness to party president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu on his move to nominate an outside candidate to contest there. They wanted MIC Gombak division chief G Jayakumar. Mohan, the Puchong MIC Youth chief, went immediately and met Jayakumar and the members to explain the party’s purpose and that had eased the tension.<\/p>\n
Another issue that appears unsettled is the roundup of Hindraf supporters at the Batu Caves compound on Nov 25. “I don’t think I have a problem tackling the Indian voters and my father, who can speak fluent Cantonese, will assist me in my campaign for Chinese votes,” Mohan, whose wife S. Logeswari is a RTM 2 Tamil newscaster, said.<\/p>\n
Mohan said he grew up at 14th mile Jalan Puchong with Malay neighbours and friends and had no problem speaking the language fluently and mixing with them freely. While the MIC is expected to face a tough fight this time around owing to various issues facing the community, it still believes it will retain the seat with a reduced majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hmm…this Puchong boy stays nearby (he’s MIC Youth Puchong head). Maybe should drop by his bungalow and interview him if can get a chance \ud83d\ude42 Youngest MIC candidate standing for election, can expect him to be president in 10-15 years? Well, let him win this election first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[130,24],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indian","tag-election-2008","tag-mic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}