Mayoral candidate will be from BJP, reiterates Ambala MLA

JJP in-charge for the polls Ashok Sherwal said that the party had demanded 11 wards along with the mayor seat

A day after Panchkula MLA Gian Chand Gupta announced that the mayoral candidate for the municipal corporation (MC) polls will be from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and not from the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), his ally in Ambala, Aseem Goel, on Tuesday reiterated the statement.

HT Image

Goel said that BJP will contest on the mayoral seat for the upcoming MC polls while JJP in-charge for the polls Ashok Sherwal said that the party had demanded 11 wards along with the mayor seat.

Speaking to the Hindustan Times, Goel said, “I say this with full responsibility that the mayoral candidate will be from the BJP itself. As of now, the JJP leaders have not put forward any demand for the mayor seat, but I have received a list of 11 wards where they’re ready to contest.”

Goel said that the official announcement on seat-sharing will be done on the day the names of the candidates are declared.

JJP meeting conducted

Sherwal, along with Shahabad MLA Ram Karan Kala, chaired his second meeting with the party workers at Tau Devi Lal Bhawan on Tuesday. He said, “The motive behind contesting together is to win the MC and the party is focused on quality, not quantity.”

“We’ve selected a few names at the meeting and will forward it to the high-command. We’ve claimed 11 wards where our candidates are strong and also the mayor seat, in our previous meetings with the BJP leaders. On Wednesday, there will be a final meeting, after which it will be clear which party will have the mayor candidate,” Sherwal, state president of the party’s SC cell, told the HT.

Sources in the BJP said that Goel had been leading closed-door meetings for seat-sharing with the JJP at local levels for the last two-three days. The party will declare its candidates from Thursday in three slots, a source had earlier said.

A top-placed source in the JJP’s Ambala unit, however, said, “We have been told by our senior leaders that the major candidates from all the three MCs (Ambala, Panchkula and Sonepat) will be from the BJP.”

This comes at a time when the saffron party is at a backfoot amid farmers’ stir on Delhi borders with many leaders and legislatures from the JJP joining them. The JJP has also demanded cancellation of the cases lodged against the farmers in the state.

AAP to support HDF

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced that it will support former state minister Nirmal Singh’s Haryana Democratic Front (HDF) in the MC polls.

The decision was taken after a meeting between AAP’s Haryana in-charge and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Gupta and HDF’s general secretary Chitra Sarwara in Delhi.

Chitra, while addressing a press conference along with AAP’s district vice-president Gagandeep Kapoor, said, “We’ve mutually discussed the local governance and decentralisation model of the Delhi government. AAP has already decided that they’ll not contest on the party symbol, but their workers can contest on the HDF symbol. We expect some other like-minded parties to support us in the coming days.”

The nomination process for the elections will begin on November 11, while voting is scheduled for the 27th and declaration of results on the 30th.