Poll tickets certain for at least 52 sitting MLAs

Poll tickets are more or less certain for 52 of Delhi?s 70 sitting MLAs. They belong to both BJP and Congress, and their names are believed to have been cleared.

Published on: Nov 5, 2003, 14:10:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Election tickets are more or less certain for 52 of Delhi’s 70 sitting MLAs. They belong to both the BJP and Congress, and their names are believed to have been cleared by their respective parties.

The BJP is likely to announce a list of 35-40 candidates in a couple of days. It will include 12 sitting legislators. The Delhi BJP’s election committee is expected to meet on Wednesday morning to give final touches to the list. The committee members will then meet the party’s central election committee on Wednesday night to have the list approved.

Some of the sitting legislators whose names are sure to be announced are Leader of the Opposition Jagdish Mukhi, former Health Minister Harshvardhan, former Industries Minister Harsharan Singh Balli, senior party MLA Ram Bhaj, Brahm Singh Tanwar and Nand Kishore Garg.

The BJP has 14 legislators. According to party sources, a decision is yet to be reached for the Badli and Shalimar Bagh seats. Jai Bhagwan Aggarwal and Ravinder Bansal are legislators from these seats respectively.

The Congress is also expected to declare its first list before the end of this week. Party sources say names of all Delhi ministers and those holding important posts in the government and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee will figure in the list.

According to sources, though the screening committee, in its meetings over the last two days, has almost reached a consensus on retaining tickets of about 40 sitting MLAs, their names may be declared later to stem any possible dissidence.

However, there are differences within the party over candidates for about 25 seats, including the 14 BJP-held ones. In some of the seats like Yamuna Vihar and Badli, the party has shortlisted four to five names. The party had received over 30 applicants for tickets from these seats.

Sons in the fray

The Delhi Congress has reportedly decided to give tickets to the sons of two Delhi Congress leaders — first CM of Delhi Brahm Prakash, and HKL Bhagat. Brahm Prakash’s son, Suresh Chaudhary, is expected to contest from an outer Delhi seat. The seats under consideration are Badli, Palam and Najafgarh. Bhagat’s son Deepak is expected to contest from east Delhi.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.