Namesake nominees fall flat
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service
Bathinda, May 16
The namesake candidates fielded by certain candidates to hurt their political opponents failed to achieve the desired results in Punjab. Only a few of them managed some votes, a margin that could not have changed the fate of the winner or loser.
The strategyto confuse the voters, though, did prove fruitful in Chhattisgarh where 12 namessake candidates were in the fray from one constituency.
Mahasamund and Raipur constituencies in Chhattisgarh witnessed five Lakhan Sahus and 11 Chandu Sahus. The real Chandu Sahu of the BJP lost by a thin margin of about 12,000 votes whereas namesake Chandu Sahus collectively bagged almost 60,000 votes.
The most controversial namesake candidate in Punjab was fielded from the prestigious Bathinda constituency where the “Badal Bahu” Harsimrat Kaur, the SAD-BJP candidate, was facing a strong anti-incumbency wave. She was pitted against her husband Sukhbir Badal’s cousin Manpreet Badal of the Cong-PPP-CPI combine.
A “duplicate” Manpreet, who was never seen campaigning and his picture was missing from his election posters, secured 4,613 votes.
Though this was a lot more than the 598 votes Manpreet’s namesake had managed in Gidderbaha during the Assembly elections in 2012. The namesake Manpreet, however, failed to make the difference. Manpreet lost by about 20,000 votes.
Punjab witnessed the phenomenon in six of the 13 constituencies -- Amritsar, Bathinda, Sangrur, Faridkot, Ludhiana and Patiala. The state capital and the Union Territory Chandigarh also had a namesake candidate in the fray.
From Amritsar, an Independent candidate Amarinder Singh bagged 1,059 votes. He was the namesake of the Congress’ winning candidate Capt Amarinder Singh.
Another Independent, Arun Kumar, who shared the first name of SAD-BJP candidate’s Arun Jaitley got about 8,500 votes. Jaitley lost by over a lakh votes.
In Sangrur, Independent candidate Bhagwant Singh got 2,334 votes compared to the massive 5,33,237 votes polled by the winning candidate Bhagwant Mann of the AAP. Another Independent candidate from Sangrur, Bijender, whose name sounds like Congress nominee Vijay Inder Singla, got 5,395 votes. Vijay Inder stood third with 1.81 lakh votes.
In Faridkot, both Congress and the Akali candidates faced namesake candidates. Paramjit Kaur Gulshan (SAD-BJP) got 2.78 lakh votes while her namesake Paramjit Kaur polled about 1,100 votes. The Congress candidate Joginder Singh bagged 2.51 lakh votes (stood third) while his namesake Joginder Singh got about 2,600 votes.
Ludhiana had a candidate named ‘Bittu’ of the Republican Party of India, who polled 1,271 votes compared to the 2.98 lakh votes of the winning Congress nominee Ravneet Singh Bittu. Similarly, an independent candidate Simerjit Singh got almost 4,000 votes compared to 2.1 lakh votes polled by Simerjit Singh Bains, an Independent.
Patiala had an independent candidate Dharampal, who polled about 1,200 votes, while the winner Dr Dharamvir Gandhi had the victory margin of about 21,000 votes. Chandigarh had the Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal, who bagged the second position with 1.21 lakh votes while his namesake Pawan Kumar got about 1,000 votes.
link: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140517/punjab.htm#4
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