The Congress candidate’s phone remains switched off.
By Ayush Tiwari
Voters in Surat will not be casting their ballots in a Lok Sabha election for the first time in 73 years. On April 22, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed from the constituency. He was contesting the first election of his life.
The historic walkover occurred after the District Election Officer on April 21 rejected the nomination papers filed by Congress candidate Nilesh Kumbhani on the grounds that the signatures of his three proposers had been forged.
Strikingly, two of the proposers are relatives of Kumbhani: Jagdish Savaliya is his brother-in-law and Dhruvin Dhameliya is his nephew. The third proposer, Ramesh Polara, is Kumbhani’s friend and partner in a construction business.
The nomination of Suresh Palsada, the backup candidate of the Congress, was also set aside because of an allegedly forged signature of Bhautik Koladiya, his nephew.
The rejections left nine competing candidates in the fray in Surat: four independents and candidates from the BJP, Bahujan Samaj Party and three from little-known parties. By April 22, all except Dalal withdrew their nominations, making way for the BJP to clinch the seat unopposed.
Scroll contacted the eight candidates in Surat who withdrew from the polls on Monday. We could speak to all of them except Pyarelal Bharti of the Bahujan Samaj Party, whose phone remains switched off.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.