I am glad you've drawn attention to the issue of poster disfigurement, Stephen Dias, and I'm sure there are many more people with no political axe to grind who disapprove of this dangerous stifling of the Trinamool Congress's attempts to come to public attention. I saw an acquaintance, the other day in Chandor, carrying three 2x4 foamboard posters of the TMC on his scooter and was stunned to learn that he had rescued them from the fields where someone had dumped them and was on the way to hand them over to the local party member. He said he was not with the TMC but he certainly didn't approve of this kind of behaviour. These were exactly my thoughts some days ago on the way to Panjim by bus and noticing the sullied, blacked out or mud-daubed face of Mamta Bannerjee on the hoardings most of the way to Verna. I wondered who stood to benefit from making life difficult for the TMC in Goa. Surely not the party which claims to be guided by the noble notions of dharma and righteous behaviour extolled by Hinduism, even though that party received a sound thrashing from the TMC somewhere recently? Surely not the poor, pathetic Congress which didn't win a single seat in the same elections where the Hindutva party received this drubbing? But going by the absence of a response from their local leader to this desecration, I have my doubts about the TMC's performance in the forthcoming elections. All the same, I think it's time the other parties retaliated, just to even things out. Most of the sullied hoardings were along the roadside and within hand's reach or from a scooter seat or the top of a vehicle. The much bigger hoardings, planted in the fields at least 10 metres from the road, had not been touched, because the faces on them were at a considerable height from the ground. It shouldn't be too difficult, though, to do the nasty to these also. All you need is two bamboos, with longish slits towards the tips, holding each end of an already printed plastic sheet. A third bamboo presses the sheet (with its adhesive glue on the back) against the hoarding, and the two side bamboos let go their grip. And, voila, ladies and gentlemen, Pramod Sawant is the devil incarnate, with burning red eyes, sinister evil horns, and smoke coming out of his nose!