PMC Elections 2017: Over 250 nominations rejected in scrutiny

PUNE: The returning officer of Panel No. 7 on Saturday rejected Reshma Bhosale’s nomination as a candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The reason cited was that Bhosale submitted her nomination as a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate, but submitted A and B forms of BJP.
Bhosale challenged the decision, and has decided to approach municipal commissioner Kunal Kumar, who is serving as chief election officer for the municipal polls.
Over 250 nominations were rejected till late on Saturday/ Scrutiny was still ongoing in some panels. About 51 nominations were rejected in Nagar Road ward office while 22 were rejected in Kothrud and 6 in Wanowrie ward office. About 32 applications were held invalid at the Yerawada ward office. Around 2,665 nominations were filed overall.
The officials also rejected the nomination of Satish Bahirat as BJP’s official candidate because the party had selected Reshma Bhosale. Both had also filed nominations as independent candidates, which were held valid.
The rejection has left BJP without any official candidate in the Pune University-Wakdewadi panel (No. 7) in the open category.
Following the decision, Bahirat said that he would contest as an independent.
Among other major rejections were Abhijit Shivarkar, Congress candidate from Wanowrie, and Sunanda Devkar, Shiv Sena candidate from Nagpur Chawl.
Meanwhile, the state election commission has urged municipal corporations not to reject nominations over small errors which might have crept in while filling in nominations online.