Campaign for elections of the councillors of Cantonment Board, scheduled for January 11, has picked up in the areas under the Cantonment Board of Dehradun. The capital city of Uttarakhand has two cantonment boards — the Clement town board and Garhi cantonment board. The election process, which started on November 17, would culminate with the elections on January 11.
Symbols to party candidates and independent candidates would be allotted on December 18. In the Clement town board, 24 independent candidates are in the electoral fray.The voters would elect 7 councilors for Clement town and 8 for Garhi Cant respectively. 38 candidates are in the fray in Clement town while 57 candidates would battle it out in 8 wards of Garhi Cant. All the major political parties have thrown their weight for the success of their party candidates. The candidates are embarking on door to door campaigning to woo the voters in their favour.
The Garhi Cantonment Board with strength of more than 50,000 voters is the most prestigious board of the hill State known for its large ex-servicemen population. This area falls in two Assembly segments of Cant and Mussoorie and incidentally both the MlA’s Ganesh Joshi and Harbans Kapoor belong to BJP. The elections would be an issue of personal prestige for both of them. In the elections of 2008, G P Tiwari of Congress was elected as the Vice President, this time the equation could change as the ward of Tiwari is reserved for women.
With a voter strength of 30,000 voters’ Clement town board is considered an important board. This area falls in the Dharampur Assembly segment represented by the Cabinet Minister Dinesh Agarwal. Bupendra Kandari, the outgoing Vice President of this board is from BJP and he would be challenging the might of Dinesh Agarwal who would try to get one of his protégé elected from this board.