Prashant Bhushan at Ramlila Maidan on Tuesday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, Dec. 27: Behind him was a poster of a frowning, finger-wagging Anna, but in front of Shanti Bhushan stretched an almost empty Ramlila Maidan.

At 11.30 this morning, one-and-a-half hours after Anna Hazare’s team sat on the dais in New Delhi, not even a hundred people had walked in.

The activist’s aides blamed the cold, bad organisation as well as poor choice of picture — the angry Anna poster beside the smiling Mahatma.

At Hazare’s last protest at the same venue in August, several thousands had gathered at the ground.

Today’s relay fast, which was to start at 10am, began an hour and a half late because there was hardly anybody around barring the father-son lawyer duo Shanti and Prashant Bhushan and some other Team Anna members.

“I am sure people will come here as well,” Prashant Bhushan said. “It is a cold, foggy day today. It will take some time for people to turn up. They will come, don’t worry.”

According to the weatherman, the maximum temperature in Delhi today was 20.8°C and the minimum was 4.1°C, but for Team Anna the biting chill lay in the Ramlila numbers.

Late tonight, Team Anna sources said Kiran Bedi, a key member, would return from Mumbai — where Hazare is fasting — to re-organise the protest in the national capital.

Not that in the merrier Mumbai weather, Hazare’s team had managed to gather a huge crowd at the MMRDA Grounds.

At the Ramlila ground, those who sauntered in were mostly elderly, not youths whose support Hazare wants.

The peak attendance, according to a police estimate, was between 800 and 1,000. Many who came in the afternoon were poor people who wanted the free meal from Anna ki Rasoi (Anna’s kitchen).

Also not visible this time were the “I am Anna” white caps. “Sale this time has been extremely bad,” said 10-year-old Salman, lugging a bagful of unsold caps that come for Rs 10 a piece. In August, the caps sold for Rs 50 each.

“Arvindji (Kejriwal) and Kiranji would have managed this better,” said Vinod Kumar, a 60-year-old retired government employee associated with the movement. But some said the absence of Hazare, the crowd-puller, was the reason so few had turned up.

But a core committee member of India Against Corruption, which has been at the forefront of the Lokpal bill agitation, said people were more interested in watching the Lok Sabha debate the bill on television. “People are watching the discussion on television. I would have done the same thing if I did not have to come to this protest,” said Arvind Gaur, whose theatre troupe performed at Ramlila.

Gaur said the organisers should have used some other photograph of Hazare instead of the frowning one.

On the dais, speakers said the protest was bigger than the JP movement. As it grew colder in the evening, people started leaving. Prashant Bhushan was heard repeatedly telling them to sit down.