Ghaziabad: Candidates prepare to hit campaign trail

GHAZIABAD: With their names finalised, the candidates for the May 11 urban local body elections are preparing to hit the campaign trail.
While 12 candidates will contest for the mayoral seat, 667 are in the fray for getting elected across the 100 wards in the GMC area.
The district election office has released EVM numbers for all mayoral candidates. The final list of candidates include AAP's Janki Jagat Bisht, BSP's Nashira Khan, Congress' Pushpa Rawat, SP's Poonam Yadav, AIMIM's Shehnaj Dilshad, BJP’s Sunita Dayal, Pinky from Jan Adhikar Party, Priya Gupta from Subhash Party, Savita Yadav from Sukhdev Bhartiya Samaj Party, and three independent candidates, Neetu Tyagi, Neeraj Prakash Choudhary and Babita Dagar.
For the post of Loni Nagar Palika chairperson, nine candidates are in the fray.In Khoda Nagar Palika, eight candidates, including an independent, will contest for the chairperson post. Modinagar Nagar Palika also has eight candidates for the chairperson post. Interestingly, alliance partners SP and RLD have fielded respective candidates--Vinod Gautam will contest with the RLD symbol and Krishna Pal Singh with the SP symbol.
RLD’s Indrajeet Singh Titu said the two parties are working out an arrangement, but with the date for withdrawal of nominations lapsed, he failed to elaborate how they would stop division of votes.
The SP-RLD alliance faced a similar issue in Loni Nagar Palika, where RLD’s Ranjeeta Dhama filed for nomination for the chairperson post, after which the SP also announced its candidate. A clash, however, was averted when the SP candidate withdrew at the last moment.
In Muradnagar Nagar Palika, there are 11 candidates, including six independents, for the chairperson post.
In this election, the BJP has already got a head start as no other contestants have filed nomination from ward number 89 (Vaishali 3), which means BJP candidate Raj Kumar Singh will win it unopposed.