With exactly a month left for municipal elections slated on April 16, the nomination filing process began on Friday. The first day of nomination filing for the upcoming municipal poll witnessed low footfall of candidates.
On first day just one candidate from ward 32 filed the nomination. For the post of Mayor, none of candidates filed the nomination 6or even collected the documents for the same on Friday while three candidates collected forms for contesting election for the post of Deputy Mayor here from Ranchi on first day of nomination filing. last date of filing the nomination is March 22.
For the post of ward councilor, maximum 18 contestants from ward 10 on day-1 collected the forms whereas from rest other wards, the footfall remained somewhere around 1 to 10. From ward 33 as many as 12 contestants took the forms, from ward 52 around 13 candidates on first day collected the documents. Similarly, from ward 37 and ward 44, just 11 and 10 contestants took the forms from the centre.
None of the contestants from ward 53 on first day collected the forms. According to the officials present at the centre, from next week, more numbers on contestants are expected to register their nominations. Some of them even stated that once the political parties make official announcements of candidates for the post of Mayor and Deputy Mayor, the nomination filing rate from different wards will increase.
After cross verifying the documents of the candidates, under strict surveillance, the nominations were filed on the first day. According to the State Election Commission (SEC) norms, candidates must have to share the details of their past criminal records, if any, details of moveable and non-moveable assets, including other related documents as mentioned in the guidelines of SEC are must to attach with the nomination documents.
Candidates who fail to present any document, his or her nomination will get cancelled automatically. After the delimitation, total number of wards has decreased from 55 to 53. Several former ward councilors are in rage over the issue of anomalies involved in voters’ lists and are yet to finalize whether to contest election this year or not.