MCD election: BJP starts scrutiny in nomination ‘fiasco’

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has started examining the issues, which led to the cancellation of municipal election nominations of party candidates.

Sources said Ram Lal, national secretary (organisation), on Thursday night held a meeting of Delhi BJP officer-bearers and party workers, whose nominations were rejected, to ascertain the exact cause of the fiasco.

Objections were raised in around 16 wards but eight party candidates lost their nominations and most of the cases were reported from east Delhi parliamentary constituency.

“Ram Lal’s query was what led to cancellation of papers in large number. It was organisation’s responsibility. What was the organisation doing? But no one could give satisfactory reply. They put the blame on returning officers,” said a source, who was in the meeting present.

A national officer-bearer told HT another meeting was held on Friday night to decide which candidates should be supported by the party in wards where it has no official contestant.

“We can’t leave those wards. We have dedicated voters there. We will take a decision on whom should we support. And soon, we will look into what went wrong and fix responsibility,” he said.

A party insider said a section of party leaders are not pleased with the development and have also conveyed their displeasure to senior leadership.

“Our point is that the party had engaged 80 lawyers and 26 chartered accountants, especially to supervise and facilitate nomination process. Despite this huge deployment, nominations were cancelled. It has caused major embarrassment to the party,” he said.