A day after the nomination of the Congress candidate from Surat was rejected, the BJP’s Mukesh Dalal was declared elected uncontested from the Lok Sabha seat, after the eight remaining nominees withdrew one by one.
While four of them were Independents, three belonged to little-known parties and one was a candidate of the BSP. Surat City BSP president Satish Sonavne alleged the hand of the BJP in the withdrawal of its nominee, Pyarelal Bharti. Monday was the last date for withdrawal of nominations.
It is rare for candidates to win uncontested in Lok Sabha elections, with only 23 such known instances before this since Independence (not counting bypolls) as per the Election Commission website. Of these, 10 won in the first two elections, 1951-1952 and 1957, when the pool of candidates was small. Dalal is the first ever BJP leader to win uncontested.
Before Dalal was declared the winner, the Congress moved the Election Commission, seeking that it postpone elections on the seat. It urged the EC to use powers under Article 324 “for setting aside the order passed by the Returning Officer cancelling Nilesh Kumbhani’s nomination, directing restoration of his candidature from the Surat Lok Sabha Constituency; or in the alternative, (accepting) nomination of the backup candidate for the INC, Suresh Padsala”.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi posted in Hindi on X: “The dictator’s real ‘surat (face)’ is before the country again. Taking away the rights of the people to elect their leader is another step towards ending the Constitution framed by Babasaheb Ambedkar.”
In all, 15 candidates had filed their nomination for the Surat seat. The papers of four were rejected earlier. After papers of the Congress candidate and the party’s substitute were also rejected, for “discrepancies in verification of signatures” of their proposers, at a special hearing held on Sunday at the Collector’s office, nine were left in the fray.
Barring the BJP’s Dalal, eight candidates then gave in writing to the election officer that they did not want to contest. Surat District Election Officer (DEO) and District Collector Saurabh Parghi subsequently declared Dalal the winner. Soon after, Gujarat BJP president C R Paatil posted: “Surat has presented the first Lotus to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
The BSP’s Sonavne claimed the party came to know only after their candidate Bharti had submitted his withdrawal letter to the DEO. He told The Indian Express: “The BJP used all means to pressure candidates to withdraw their forms, and was successful.”
He added that the BSP feared something like this after the Congress candidate’s nomination was rejected and had hence shifted Bharti to Vadodara, along with his children, given him a new mobile number, and told him to switch off his regular number so that he could not be tracked. “We believe they tracked our mobile phones and got his number.”
Claiming that the BSP had got the support of the Aam Aadmi Party after the Congress leader’s candidature was rejected – the AAP is fighting two seats in Gujarat in alliance with the Congress – Sonavne said: “I last spoke with Pyarelal on Monday at 4.30 am and he said a lot of people had surrounded the location where he was kept in Vadodara.”
Sonavne added that their suspicions rose when they could not get in touch with Bharti Monday morning onwards. “We searched for him everywhere. Later, we came to know that Pyarelal had reached Surat, presented himself before the Surat election officer and handed in an application that he did not want to contest, and that he was not under any pressure.”
The BJP had picked Dalal, 62, as its Surat candidate in place of Darshana Jardosh, its three-time MP from the seat and Union Minister of State for Railways and Textiles.
Dalal, who is from the OBC Modhvanik community, is the Surat city BJP general secretary and a chairman of the Surat Municipal Corporation Standing Committee. He has been director of Surat People’s Cooperative Bank for the last 20 years.
Dalal’s election agent Dinesh Jodhani first raised an objection to Kumbhani’s nomination, alleging the signatures of his proposers were bogus, a day after he had filed his nomination, on April 19. The Congress legal team’s representation to the DEO against this on Sunday was rejected.
Apart from the BSP’s Bharti, those who withdrew from the race Monday were Shoeb Shaikh (Log Party), Abdul Hamid Khan (Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Party), Jayesh Mevada (Global Republican Party), and Independents Bharat Prajapati, Ajit Umat, Kishor Dayani and Baraiya Ramesh.
DEO Parghi said the eight came to the office and announced their intention to withdraw. “We took their video statements and their applications in writing… BJP Surat candidate Mukesh Dalal was the only one remaining, so as per rules, we declared him uncontested winner.”
Congress communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh posted on X: “Aap chronology samajhiye: Surat District Election Officer rejects @INCIndia’s candidate for Surat Lok Sabha, Nilesh Kumbhani’s nomination for ‘discrepancies in verification of signatures of three proposers’. On similar grounds, officials reject the nomination of Suresh Padsala, the INC’s substitute candidate from Surat. Congress Party is left without a candidate. All other candidates withdraw their nomination except BJP’s candidate, Mukesh Dalal. BJP candidate declared ‘elected unopposed’… nearly two weeks before polling on May 7th, 2024.”
Ramesh added that the BJP is so “spooked” that it is resorting to “match-fix” the Surat Lok Sabha elections, despite having won the seat consistently since 1984.
Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who led a party delegation to meet the EC, told reporters: “In James Bond parlance, the first time is happenstance, the second time is coincidence and the third time is enemy action. In Surat, the Congress candidate who was nominated by four proposers… suddenly all four stand up and deny their signatures… all four together. This is no coincidence. The candidate is missing for many hours. By the time he surfaces, we find that every other candidate has withdrawn their candidature.”
Singhvi added: “If you don’t want to have elections in this country and if you want to hand over Surat on a platter, then why go through the charade of elections?… This is a case of no election by complete subordination of the democratic will of several contestants and several proposers.”
Mukesh Dalal (right) with Gujarat BJP president CR Paatil. (X/ANI) 
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