7 may be barred from contesting for 6 years

LUDHIANA: Of the 136 candidates who contested the assembly elections for 14 constituencies of the district, seven have failed to submit the details of expenses incurred during campaigning.

The candidates belong to different outfits, including Apna Punjab Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Democratic Swaraj Party and Swabhiman Party. Two of them are independents, but none from the prominent parties. The report would now be sent to the election commission that may even bar them from fighting elections for the next six years, deputy commissioner

Pradeep Aggarwal

said.

“The election commission may give them another chance if they respond with a sound reason for their failure to submit the details. The report was compiled on Thursday and before that notices were served on the candidates to submit the information,” Aggarwal added.

The seven include

Kunvar Ranjan Singh

(Democratic Swaraj Party), Maninder Sharma (independent),

Ravi Kumar Vaid

(Swabhiman Party), Udham Singh Gill (independent),

Rajinder Kumar

(Bahujan Samaj Party),

Sukhpreet Singh

(Apna Punjab Party) and Jaswinder Singh (Bahujan Samaj Party).

All of them were defeated and lost their security deposits in the February elections. They had got less than 700 votes except Rajinder Kumar from Ludhiana (north), who secured 1,513 votes.

Kunvar Ranjan Singh said he received the notice just one day before the last date of information submission and as he was out of town, he would give account details after returning to the city. Rajinder Kumar of the BSP also said he was not in the city when the notice was sent and that he would contact the DC office shortly.

The EC had fixed campaign expense limit in Punjab at Rs 28 lakh per candidate. The candidates used many high-costing tricks to woo the voters, but none in the district showed expenditure excess of the limit.