Candidates, but not voters

Candidates may have worked overtime since last fortnight, seeking votes for themselves. But some of them will very well vote or have already voted for candidates other than themselves.

Published on: May 10, 2004, 03:29:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Candidates may have worked overtime since last fortnight, seeking votes for themselves. But some of them will very well vote or have already voted for candidates other than themselves.

Chandni Chowk is one seat where both BJP and Congress candidates are not local residents. So, they are registered as voters elsewhere.

Smriti Z. Irani is a voter of Mumbai, having already voted in the South Mumbai seat on April 26.

Her Congress rival, Kapil Sibal, is closer to Chandni Chowk. He is a voter in the New Delhi constituency.

Congress’ New Delhi candidate Ajay Maken will vote in Rajouri Garden. Before that, he will accompany party president Sonia Gandhi to the College of Arts, Tilak Marg where she will cast her vote. “He was not able to transfer his vote as his ticket was decided at the last moment,” said an aide. Jagmohan of the BJP is a voter in that constituency.

For Sandeep Dikshit, the Congress candidate from east Delhi, nomination for election has meant moving closer to his constituency to cast his vote. His vote was transferred to Mathura Road home of chief minister Sheila Dikshit recently from Bhopal, where he used to reside before jumping into electoral politics.

Four-time MP from Delhi Sadar, Jagdish Tytler, will take time-out from doing the rounds of polling booths to cast his vote at Bal Bharti School near Ganga Ram Hospital. He is listed as a voter of Rajender Nagar. His rival Vijay Goel will cast his vote in Roop Nagar, which falls in Sadar.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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