Due to a small mistake, the “Covering candidate” of Aam Aadmi Party for lucknow seat, Adarsh Shastri became an independent candidate against his own Party’s candidate, Jaaved Jaaferi.
Saturday was the last day for withdrawing the candidature from the lok Sabha Elections, but inexperience party workers Shashtri’s name was not withdraw and ‘Belt’ symbol was allocated to him as Independent candidate.
Notably, fearing cancellation of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate, Jaaved Jaaferi’s nomination after allegations and anomalies regarding his name in the electoral list, Adarsh Shahstri was asked to file nomination as ‘covering candidate’ on April 9. Both Jaaved Jaaferi and Adarsh Shastri filed nomination papers for lucknow seat.
District Magistrate and Returning Officer (lucknow seat), Raj Shekhar said Shastri’s proposers were not able to produce valid documents for withdrawing the candidature. They were giving a print out of an email which cannot be taken as legal document. “Either candidate should present by himself or valid written application duly signed by candidate presented by the proposers should be given for withdrawing the name,” he added.
DM said: “As Shastri was in Allahabad, an option of sending the withdrawal application through FAX on district Magistrate’s number was given but till 3 pm we didn’t get any such fax even.” He added that if application comes through fax, the officials confirm it with the candidate and then withdrawal of candidature is done.
When contacted AAP state Spokesperson, Vaibhav Maheswari said it was a mistake that proposers were not able to figure out and the Shastri’s candidature was not withdrawn on time. Shastri will contest election from Allahabad and will not do any kind of campaigning for himself in lucknow as Jaaved Jaaferi is official candidate of party. “Shastri will file his nomination paper from Allahabad constituency and contest elections on party’s symbol from there only,” he added.