Civic poll candidates fate hangs in balance

pune: anxiety grips the candidates contesting the february civic polls as the fate of polls, particularly those in the 10 panels, which include the de-linked villages, continues to hang in balance. even the candidates from the 38 panels, for which elections have not been stayed, are a worried lot. this, because the pmc election office on tuesday issued orders to undertake a fresh scrutiny to identify the addresses of the candidates contesting the elections from the 38 panels.the move has been initiated as the election office apprehends that some of the candidates from these 38 panels may be residents of the delinked villages. as the bombay high court has ordered the pmc not to include the delinked villages in the pmc's election process the candidates residing in these de-linked villages are not eligible to contest the civic polls. pmc's election officer rajendra nimbalkar said he has directed the 12 divisional ward offices to check the proof of residence of all the candidates. "if it is found that a candidate hails from a delinked village, we will issue him a letter stating that the fate of his nomination depends on the high court's order," he pointed out. when reminded that the pmc on tuesday had allotted symbols to all the candidates in these 38 panels, nimbalkar said, "if the nomination is considered invalid, then the symbol will get cancelled automatically." however, political observers say this may create more problems because if a political party has given a ticket to a resident of a delinked village to contest the polls from any of the 38 panels, then it may object to the cancellation of the nomination of their party candidate and would demand that the election office allow it to nominate some other candidate. as there is no provision to file nominations after the date of withdrawals, the matters would get more complicated and may eventually affect the entire poll process, they believe. nimbalkar too was wary of this and said, "we are praying that no party or front nominates a resident from a delinked village." meanwhile, shiv sena candidate mahesh jagtap failed to get the party's official party symbol -- bow and arrow -- as he had not submitted the original letter issued by the party stating that he was the official candidate. jagtap had attached a photo-copy of the authority letter to his nomination paper. though this photo-copy was attested by a notary, the pmc's election office refused to considered jagtap as the official sena candidate from the sonawane hospital panel. jagtap has been now forced to contest the civic polls as an independent and his election symbol will be a "candle". in a late night development, the pmc's dhole-patil road election office has lodged a police complaint against 21 candidates from golf club, netaji vidyalaya, tadiwala road and sangamwadi panels for their failure to submit the day-to-day accounts of their election campaigns. the names of the candidates could not be ascertained.