With major political parties dragging their feet in announcing the candidates from Chandigarh parliamentary seat, the local party units have deferred the launch of new political campaigns by a week.
From re-launching of parties websites to enactment of street plays, the political parties have postponed their political campaigns aimed at popularising the local candidates.Three political parties namely the Congress, the BJP, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are yet to announce their candidates from Chandigarh parliamentary consistency.
The AAP candidate Savita Bhatti had already withdrawn her candidature and the party is now in the process to announce new candidate from the lok Sabha constituency. On the other hand, the BJP and the Congress candidates were expected to be announced last week but the name of candidates did not find any mention in the lists released by the respective parties.
Consequently, the political parties here have postponed their new campaigns and now, waiting anxiously for the announcement of candidate’s name. Eyeing lok Sabha polls, the Chandigarh BJP had decided to relaunch its website with new features and pictures of party’s candidate on Sunday. But, the relaunch is postponed as the announcement of candidate is awaited. Padyatra by party’s candidate, distribution of publicity material, street plays and rallies in the city had also been planned for this week by the BJP.
likewise, the Congress city unit had also geared up to initiate its political campaign including holding rallies, distribution of publicity material, campaigns on social networking websites among others from this week onwards.
On the other hand, the AAP had earlier initiated Jhadu Yatra and other campaigns signifying party’s fight against corruption in the country and their motive to weed out corruption and dynastic rule but a fresh campaign for party’s candidate is yet to get off the ground after Bhatti withdrew her candidature.
It is only the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that has announced its candidate Jannat Jahan from Chandigarh parliamentary seat. Jahan has already launched a door-to-door campaign to reach out to the city voters. Besides, the BSP supremo Mayawati will address a rally on March 30 in favor of party’s candidate here.
While talking to The Pioneer, a senior BJP leader said that the party has planned a number of campaigns for its candidates from Chandigarh. But, we are waiting for announcement of party’s candidate. Our website will be re-launched besides campaigns aimed at popularising local party’s candidate will began after the announcement.
At present, the Chandigarh BJP’s ongoing campaigns namely ‘Missed Call’, ‘Kamal — Mehndi & Rangoli’, ‘Modi Caféteria’ focusses on promoting its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi while Congress’ padyatra campaign focusses on popularising UPA’s achievements.
“Our candidate is likely to be announced on March 12 now. The campaign will pick up pace only after then. Presently, we are not sure who would get the ticket from here,” said a Congress leader.
The Chandigarh BJP president Sanjay Tandon and senior leader Harmohan Dhawan are among the front runners to get BJP’s ticket to contest the ballot fight from the city. The sitting Congress MP Pawan Kumar Bansal remains a strong contender to get Congress ticket though his name was missing from the first list released by the Congress on last Saturday.
Notably, the name of Congress candidate from Chandigarh did not find any mention in the list of 194 candidates announced by the Congress on Saturday. Similarly, the BJP also did not announce its city candidate and now, likely to announce it on March 13. The polling day in Chandigarh is less than a month away. The last date for filing nominations is March 22 while the date of polling in Chandigarh is April 10.The scrutiny of nominations would be held till March 24 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 26 in the city.