Cong shortlists 53 candidates for Delhi Assembly polls

New Delhi, Oct 25 (UNI) The Congress today shortlisted candidates for 53 Assembly constituencies in Delhi, said DPCC president  J P Agrawal.  The remaining 17 will be decided later, he said. A formal announcement will be made by the AICC. ”The names of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, most of her cabinet colleagues and several sitting MLAs have been finalised,” party sources said. They, however, said the name of Health Minister Yoganand Shastri has been kept pending.

 

Two DPCC office-bearers Madan Karwal and Suresh Malik have also been named, sources said.

Jagiram Bhatti, Delhi BSP chief, who recently joined the Congress, former BJP member Dayanand Chandela and NCP’s Ramvir Singh Bidhuri have also been given tickets, they added.

SAD determined to contest Delhi elections on its own symbol

Jalandhar, Oct 25 (PTI) The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said that it was determined to contest the Delhi

Assembly elections on its symbol but insisted that the talks with BJP over seat sharing had not failed. “Who said that talks on seat sharing with BJP has failed, rather it is in the positive direction and I am hopeful that the issue will be resolved,” SAD president Sukhbir Badal told reporters while replying to a query.

Sukhbir said the party had already applied for a symbol with the Election Commission for contesting the Delhi

election. As far as the issue of seat sharing is concerned, it was an “internal matter” of BJP and SAD and would be resolved amicably, he added. On the upcoming Lok Sabha election, Sukhbir said the

process of selecting the candidates for the 10 parliamentary seats in Punjab had already been initiated .

Describing the UPA government as “defunct”, Sukhbir said the current economic crisis was a result of faulty

policies of the ruling alliance. Sukhbir said the Rs 50 per quintal bonus on paddy was a “cruel joke” on farmers

BJP using RTI to nail govt

Times of India

 

NEW DELHI: This is the first Assembly election in Delhi where the opposition seems to be making full use of the RTI Act to catch the government on th

e wrong foot. During the 2003 elections, RTI was still a relatively new concept and parties had not quite realized its potential as a weapon in a democracy.

 

Delhi BJP started its own RTI unit three months ago after some of its leaders started feeling that the city government was spending too much public money for an “image makeover” by issuing frequent and irrelevant advertisements. The unit has since unearthed information about how the government spent over Rs 45 crore in advertisements during 2007-08 and 2008-09 financial years, apart from nailing the government in numerous other issues.

 

What is all the more surprising is that the replies obtained under the RTI showed that out of Rs 7.87 crore spent on advertisements in 2007-08, approximately Rs 4.9 crore was non-planned expenditure, said a senior BJP leader.

 

Armed with information obtained using RTI, the party’s chief ministerial nominee Vijay Kumar Malhotra has attacked the government over the fact that only 1,716 people have been given a state government job in the 10 years of its rule. “Currently, nine district employment offices, two special employment offices for the handicapped, one special employment office for ex-servicemen and three university employment information and guidance bureaus are functioning. But the government has only been able those few jobs,” said an official release issued by his office.

 

The cell has also obtained “valuable” information about the Rajiv Gandhi Awas Yojna under which the state government was supposed to provide houses for the urban poor. “To date they have acquired land only in one village in Poot Khurd in Outer Delhi. The government had promised to create 60,000 houses by September this year. But an RTI reply shows how only 9,436 housing units are coming up,” said a party leader.

 

BJP state unit president Dr Harshvardhan said, “We started the cell with an idea to find out information from government departments. It was a constructive step taken to create a healthy public opinion. We are not looking at this initiative for political purpose only.”

 

RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal said, “The opposition plays a very important role in democracy. Earlier the opposition used to take up non-issues because they had no information about the developmental aspects. Opposition parties should put the information collected through RTI in public domain. Rather than talking about caste and religion, parties should focus on how money has been by the government and what has happened to the developments.”

Delhi police begins identifying sensitive booths

Sahara Samay

 

NEW DELHI: Delhi police has started the process of identifying “troublesome” or “sensitive” polling stations for the November 29 Assembly election.

 

The Delhi Electoral office has asked the police to identify sensitive areas as per new Assembly boundaries defined under delimitation process.

 

They will then be further divided into communally sensitive places and areas from where bogus voting has been reported in the past or where situation is “not conducive”.

 

“We have asked the police to rope in district election officers as well as they too are working at the ground level and aware of the undercurrents in their districts. They can also better identify the polling stations which are prone to violence due to communal flare-upw or bogus voting,” a senior official at the Delhi Chief Electoral Office said.

 

He said, depending on the gravity of the problem, police will have to seek additional forces to maintain vigil during the election.

 

During the last Assembly election in 2003, while 29 polling booths had been declared “hypersensitive” and another 211 were identified as “sensitive”.

 

At least 35,000 security personnel including central paramilitary forces were deployed across the capital while a reserve of 20,000 personnel were on stand-by to meet any eventuality.

 

Like the last election, Home Guards will also be pressed into service during the polls. The police have also been asked to prepare a list of criminals including “bad characters” who are likely to indulge in bootlegging and other illegal activities during the elections.

Indian Justice Party releases names of candidates

1. Delhi Cantt. – B. K. Singh

2. Uttam Nagar – Prem Chand Prajapati

3. Trinagar – Ram Kisan

4. Mustafabad – Laxman Tomar

5. Gokalpur – Haribabu

6. Buradi – Munna Thekedar

Delhi police begins identifying sensitive booths

Defection fears makes Cong jittery

Sunday, October 19, 2008 13:57 [IST]

New Delhi: With just a little over a month left for the Delhi Assembly elections, the ruling Congress is still unable to announce a list of probable candidates as the fear of defections looms large.

 

Facing anti-incumbency, the Congress is trying to find the right candidates in many seats, especially where smaller parties like BSP and LJP are contesting against it.

 

The LJP and BSP, which have a support base among Dalits, Muslims ande people from Bihar and eastern UP, can dent the grand old party s traditional vote-bank.

 

“For the past three months, we are working hard to finalise tickets but since we have two senior party leaders for one constituency in many segments, the meetings are held regularly to decide on the possible names,” a senior Congress leader said.

 

The delimitation has made the task of finalising the list of 70 names even more difficult as as some seats such as Jangpura, Sadar Bazar, Tri Nagar and Malviya Nagar have many stalwarts vying for them.

 

One of the senior leaders affected is Health Minister Yoganand Shastri. A large part of his Malviya Nagar constituency has gone to Hauz Khas where Congress MLA Kiran Walia had won last time.

 

Besides, remaining parts of Shastri s areas have been merged with Greater Kailash.

 

Similarly, Congress MLAs Tajddar Babbar and Tarvinder Marwah have interests in the same constituencies as after the delimitation, a large chunk of the former s Minto Road constituency is now in Marwah s Jungpura area.

Source : PTI

Don’t count on us, address the real issues: Muslims

18 Oct 2008, 2350 hrs IST, TNN

 

NEW DELHI: This may be disturbing news for the political parties which are vying with each other to cynically tap into the Muslim community’s unease 

over the Batla House encounter. It’s still early days, but a random survey of Muslim-dominated assembly constituencies in east Delhi shows that the community at large in these areas is more concerned about the `bijli, paani, sadak’ issues. The dilapidated road conditions, overflowing drains, poor hygiene and sanitation and other civic issues is agitating them.

 

The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party seem to have their work cut out as many in the community are inclined to vote for the Congress, saying they have “no other option”. Muslims voters in Seelampur, Karawal Nagar, Babarpur and Mustafabad seemed to be in general agreement over supporting the Congress.

 

Most of the Muslim voters these reporters spoke to insisted that the Batla House encounter won’t be the deciding factor though many of them did concede that much would depend on the decisions of the ulemas. Surprisingly, many of them were not fully aware of what had happened at Batla House. “A meeting of ulemas is being organised somewhere in Maujpur. We will follow whatever they decide. But for now, our main concern is to get a leader who would improve our living conditions,” said Taufiq, a resident of Kardampuri, a huge residential cluster in Babrpur assembly constituency.

 

Mohd Haneef, a carpenter from Babarpur, added: “We have never cast our vote on communal lines and we have always supported the Congress. But in the recent elections, the BSP made inroads in all the surrounding constituencies of Nand Nagri, Gokalpuri, Karawal Nagar and Mustafabad. The Muslim vote has got divided and this only helps the BJP,” he argued.

 

A resident of Seelampur, Hazi Afzal, insisted that the Congress would get the major share of Muslim vote. “The BSP and the SP stand no chance of getting a good share of these votes since the contest will be between the Congress and the BJP. Supporting the Congress is our compulsion,” he said, adding that it won’t be a cakewalk for the Congress.

 

Many Muslim voters said they would support a candidate or party which they believe would carry out development work. “We will vote for the Congress since we have done that all these years. But there is a feeling among residents that we should try out a candidate who is more promising,” said Hakeem, a resident of Rajiv Vihar in Khajoori, which falls under Karawal Nagar assembly constituency.

 

In fact, a few from the community said they could vote even for the BJP if they were convinced the candidate would work for civic improvement. Shahid, a shopkeeper from Mustafabad, said, “Look at what the Congress has done in south Delhi. There is a huge difference between south Delhi and trans-Yamuna areas. This area is not livable.”

 

Going a step ahead, Khaliq Ahmed, a shopowner from Karawal Nagar, said, “The Congress is like a hidden enemy, the BJP at least attacks from the front. I will vote for the BJP.”

 

However, not a single Muslim woman TOI spoke to was ready to divulge anything, saying that `male members’ would decide whom they should vote for. Wakila from Babarpur, however, said, “My family always votes for the Congress. Not that this helps me much. My son has studied so much, but he is still unemployed. What is the party doing?”

 

SP says it will reserve 40% seats for Muslims

19 Oct 2008, 0023 hrs IST, Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN

 

NEW DELHI: In its latest move to woo Muslim voters ahead of assembly elections, Samajwadi Party (SP) has announced to reserve as many as 40% of its seats for Muslim candidates. The announcement comes close on the heels of the party taking the lead to press for a judicial inquiry into the Batla House encounter episode in Jamia Nagar.

 

State party unit president Shyam Gambhir said they would come out with the first list of candidates on Wednesday and the party would field 50 to 60 candidates for the elections. “We are making all possible efforts to win as many seats as we can win. One thing is sure that the party will open its account in Delhi assembly. With party national leaders addressing rallies and participating in the poll campaign, we will give a good fight,” said Gambhir.

 

While the party has not yet played any significant role in city politics, its leadership is hopeful of making inroad into Muslim dominated areas here. Already, party general secretary Amar Singh has addressed two meetings in Okhla area to consolidate the party’s presence in the locality. “Delhi has a large chunk of people from Uttar Pradesh (UP), where we have already made our mark. Migrated population from UP would find us as the first choice,” said one of the finalised candidates.

 

He added they would concentrate more on constituencies with influential percentage of Muslim voters. “The community is realising how depending on any other party is a suicide. Congress has only used them to come to power and during Mayawati rule Muslim youth have been arrested from her state,” the leader said.

Pre-poll political equations

Business Standard

 

Delhi

The Congress has managed to circumvent the electoral code of conduct (that bars launching of any new schemes after the EC announces polls) by a whisker. Just last week the government here distributed provisional certificates to residents of many of the 1,400 unauthorised colonies, promising them that these would soon be regularised.

 

It was a function presided over by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, besides Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and possible chief minister-in-waiting Ajay Maken, and was unofficially the launch of the party’s election campaign.

 

About 4 million Delhiites will benefit from the move if it wins the apex court’s approval. The government is already laying sewers and drains in 700 of these colonies on a war footing. And these 4 million people are what the Congress is banking on to help it romp home for the third consecutive time. The total budget allocation for the regularisation drive is Rs 3,000 crore.

 

As many as 400,000 slum dwellers will move into flats which the Congress government has promised.

 

Supremely confident, Delhi party president J P Agarwal said: “We have worked hard and so we are cent per cent confident of our victory.” Agarwal is perhaps the only party president in the last one decade who has no axe to grind with the CM. Dikshit has had a running battle with dissident party leaders.

 

BJP chief ministerial candidate V K Malhotra, on the other hand, is still cobbling together support from party cadres. About 60 corporators of the BJP led by party organising secretary Jagdish Mamgain recently submitted a memorandum to party president L K Advani and other leaders, demanding that councillors be considered as candidates for contesting the Assembly elections. Malhotra oppose their demand.

 

The BSP factor does not bother either the BJP or the Congress. Both say Mayawati’s charm has waned after the initial months of her government in Uttar Pradesh.

 

Delhi’s next CM?

Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi October 04, 2008, 0:12 IST

 

The odds are in favour of BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra. Here’s why?

 

 

C P Singh is an engineer, a Jatav (Dalit) by caste. He will contest an election for the first time in his life when the Delhi Assembly poll is held in November or December this year. He is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate from Kondli, a working class constituency from East Delhi. All the indications are that he will win what has been a Congress bastion.

 

Ditto, Kailash Jain, who is the BSP candidate from Babarpur. Jain was earlier in the Congress and has crossed over to the BSP. The entire lower caste base of the Congress in Babarpur has decamped to the BSP.

 

What do the two men have in common? They are independently wealthy, which is why the BSP has chosen them. In the past, the BSP candidate would be selected solely on the basis of caste and because he wasn’t rich, he would take money from his party as well as the other side and simply retire from the contest.

 

Now the BSP is selecting not necessarily the most deprived to represent the party; nor is being Dalit the only qualification. The bottom line is the BSP nominee should be a man of standing in the community. That way, it is harder for him to overlook peer group pressure.

 

For the BSP it is a double whammy. Much of the East Delhi voting population is from UP or Bihar. Of this, a big percentage is the committed Scheduled Caste (SC) voter. After making behen Mayawati the chief minister of UP, this class is determined to replicate this exercise in empowerment in Delhi.

 

This is the reason why — unless the Congress does a deal with the BSP — the Bahujan Samaj Party will get at least 15 per cent of the vote in the Delhi Assembly elections, will fatally wound the Congress and will enable, admittedly by a narrow margin, Vijay Kumar Malhotra to become chief minister of Delhi.

 

Not everyone in the BJP wanted V K Malhotra to be the party’s choice for chief minister. But the choice was between Harshvardhan (no charisma, though L K Advani and the RSS wanted him) and Vijay Goel (in a party where the tension has always been between the ‘refugee’ Punjabi post-partition settlers of Delhi and locals, Goel has the unequivocal backing of the latter). If either of the two had been chosen, a rebellion would have broken out and the slender lead that the BJP has over the Congress would have been leveled. But Malhotra’s seniority, it was felt, would keep the ambitions of the other two factions in check. The best man, of course, would have been Jagdish Mukhi, currently leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly. But Mukhi is struck by the curse of the office he holds: many in the BJP think he’s far closer to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit than he should be.

 

At first, Malhotra didn’t want the job: in terms of seniority, he is senior even to L K Advani (having been the equivalent of the first chief minister of Delhi — the chief executive councillor in 1967 — and the first chief minister the BJP’s ever had). For more than three decades, the Delhi BJP was ruled by a three-member Punjabi troika — Kedar Nath Sahni (now a venerable 82), V K Malhotra and Madanlal Khurana. These three never allowed any other leader to come up, including the representative of the locals, Kanwar Lal Gupta and later, Vijay Goel, and a candidate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), O P Kohli.

 

Sahni has now virtually given up active politics — he was made Governor of Goa when the NDA was in power. The story of how Madanlal Khurana has rapidly and repeatedly shot himself in the foot is too painful to bear recounting here. Once Khurana was out of the party, Malhotra reckoned it was time for him to make his moves. In fact, at one time an inseparable friend of Khurana’s, Malhotra became his biggest critic.

 

2004 capped a string of electoral successes of V K Malhotra. He was a member of the Lok Sabha from 1977 to 1980, and then again from 1989 to 1991. He was in the Rajya Sabha in 1994 and at the fag end of the Rajya Sabha term, contested the Lok Sabha in 1999, defeating current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In 2004, the BJP won just one Lok Sabha seat from Delhi; Malhotra’s from South Delhi (he trounced the Congress candidate, R K Anand).

 

Malhotra’s association with Delhi is his undeniable advantage: he taught at the PGDAV (evening) College and for years groomed students. He also studied at Delhi University himself (Hansraj College, where he was the students’ union president). He derives his influence from the ABVP, the BJP’s student wing.

 

Not even the most optimistic assessment by the BJP points to a sweep in favour of Malhotra. Everyone concedes that the fight will be a tough one, especially if the Congress indicates Dikshit will continue as CM. But there is anti-incumbency after two Congress terms. Workers say price rise is not an electoral differentiator yet, but bomb blasts most assuredly are.

 

In the final analysis, some in the BJP say the party might have to go cap in hand to the BSP to seek its help in forming the government. But the nearly 20 per cent ‘undecided’ vote is also unpredictable. If Malhotra can somehow persuade this section to vote for him, well, he might get his sweep, after all.