Swaraj Abhiyan chief Yogendra Yadav on Thursday met the Delhi Election Commissioner SK Srivastava, seeking his direction to Returning Officers concerned to reconsider rejection of nomination papers filed by the 24 candidates of his party.
“Nominations of 24 of our candidates have been rejected arbitrarily during scrutiny. We have requested Commissioner SK Srivastava to direct the Returning Officers concerned to re-evaluate the nomination papers,” he said.
Yadav, who spent more than four hours waiting for the Commissioner at the EC office, claimed that the nominations were rejected due to “small errors”. “The nomination of a woman candidate was cancelled as she did not specify her gender. One of the documents did not have signature and leaving the column for fathers, mothers, husband’s name blank were some of the reasons,” he said.
The Delhi State Election Commission had on Wednesday rejected around 40 per cent of 4,605 nominations filed for the April 23 elections to the three municipal corporations during scrutiny of documents.
“Such rejections make a mockery of democracy and violate written rules,” the Swaraj India leader said. He also alleged that candidates of big political parties were allowed to make corrections in their papers. “The AAP and BJP candidates were making corrections in front of us, but we were treated differently,” he claimed. Yadav said the Commissioner assured him of instructing all ROs to reevaluate all nominations that have been rejected. “All our candidates will go to the ROs with their applications. We are hopeful of getting justice,” he said.
Meanwhile, the independent candidates and those belonging to minor parties protested and raised slogans against the EC for rejecting their nominations in a similar way. “One of our candidates' nominations was rejected for not striking off a particular word," said Girish, zone co-ordinator of Bahujan Samaj Party.