The poor performance of Congress candidates in the municipal polls of 2007 will now reflect on the allotment of tickets for the Assembly elections. Party sources said when Sonia Gandhi and Congress Election Committee would sit for reallocation of tickets for 47 MLAs on October 20, the performance of candidates under them during the civic polls would be taken into account.Many of the 47 MLAs had lost all MCD seats under them. “There are clear orders that the sitting MLAs should not be reconsidered for ticket if all Congress candidates under them lost the people’s mandate during the MCD polls,” said a senior Congress leader.One of the bigwigs who shared this fate is Ram Babu Sharma, former Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president. All four MCD candidates who contested from Sharma’s constituency of Rohtas Nagar lost the elections. Sharma’s example is closely followed by Hastsal MLA Mukesh Sharma, another heavyweight in the Congress camp. No councillor under Sharma had managed to win the MCD polls.Three candidates under Congress MLA Narender Nath, who heads the Trans Yamuna Development Board’s constituency Shahdara, lost the 2007 polls. Naseeb Singh, who is Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Minister, too, faced a similar fate with just a single candidate under him winning the polls.In several cases, even the relatives of sitting MLAs had failed to impress voters. For example, the younger brother of Congress MLA from Patparganj Amrish Gautam and the nephew of Congress MLA from Nangloi Dr Vijendra Singh were among the candidates who lost. The other big names under whom at least three candidates were defeated include Meera Bhardwaj from Mandawali (east Delhi), Bhisham Sharma from Gonda, Surender Kumar from Bawana and Mateen Ahmed from Seelampur. The screening committee will also take into account the margin of victory of the winning candidates in the MCD elections.Delimitation spells troubleApart from the civic link, another factor is going to spell trouble for at least six sitting MLAs. There is a delimitation tussle between Tarwinder Marwah and Tajdar Babbar, whose constituencies have been merged into Jungpura; Dr Kiran Walia and Health Minister Yoganand Shastri, whose constituencies Hauz Khas and Malviya Nagar have been merged; and north Delhi MLAs Rajesh Jain and Shadi Ram, who are both fighting for the Sadar Bazaar seat.
