The other two prominent faces of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE)—M. Pushparayan and M.P. Jesuraj—will contest from Tuticorin and Tirunelveli respectively.

Keeping to its earlier promise of fielding candidates against MPs with corruption charges, the party also nominated J. Prabhakar, a social activist and coordinator for several voluntary organisations, to take on Dayanidhi Maran of the DMK in Chennai (Central).

In Coimbatore, long-term People’s Union for Civil Liberties activist, Pon Chandran, will enter the poll battle.

The Erode constituency has been allotted to K.K. Kumarasamy, who is involved in propagating organic farming whereas R. Chakravarthy Rajagopalan, founder of ‘Voice of Youth for Clean Environment’, will contest from Tirupur.

For Salem, the party will field Satheesh Kumar, a software engineer from BITS Pilani who now works with grassroot organisations in different fields.

He is also the youngest of the eight at 39 years. The average age of the eight contestants was 61.3 years.

Speaking to The Hindu, state convenor of the AAP, Christina Samy, said the party may contest in more than 20 constituencies.

While the first list had focused on seats in the Western and Southern regions of the State, it would be ensured that all regions of Tamil Nadu were adequately covered by the party in the Lok Sabha polls.

Ms. Samy said strength of contestants and organisational capacity in the particular constituency was important factors in choosing seats.

The candidates from the Congress, the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are all Yadavs though their caste may or may not have been the reason they were picked for the constituency adjoining Delhi.

The Congress has named three-time legislator Rao Dharampal (a Yadav). Ajay Singh Yadav, a six-time legislator from Rewari and at present a cabinet colleague of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had wanted the seat for his son, Chiranjiv Rao.

Outgoing MP Rao Inderjeet Singh, also a Yadav, recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party after serving the Congress for more than three-and-a-half decades.

Political scientist and AAP ideologue Yogender Yadav was the first among the four main candidates to start his election campaign in Gurgaon.

The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has fielded Zakir Hussain, a Meo, as a Muslim in this region is known.

All the four heavyweight candidates will seek to woo the nearly 180,000 voters of Gurgaon for the April 10 ballot.

Gurgaon voters are spread over nine assembly segments. Gurgaon and Badshahpur segments have the highest number of nearly 600,000 votes.

Other assembly seats in the constituency include Pataudi, Rewari, Bawal, Sohna, Ferozepur Jhirka, Punhana and Nuh.

The Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat is Ahir-dominated (Yadav and Rao), with more than 500,000 voters. Meos make up nearly 450,000 voters.

The INLD hopes to rope in the Meo votes along with the constituency’s nearly 150,000 Jat voters besides others, said its spokesman R.S. Dahiya. The INLD has traditionally relied on Jat support.

The BJP feels that Rao Inderjeet Singh is bound to gather immense support as he has always raised his voice in favour of southern Haryana.

Besides, it feels the appeal of its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will sway the voters.

The AAP, however, thinks that it will be the biggest beneficiary of voter disenchantment with the political class.

“We are fighting for the rights of aam aadmi (common people and against corruption,” AAP activist Om Prakash Yadav told IANS.

“The Congress and the BJP are two faces of the same coin. People all over Gurgaon are supporting us from the bottom of their hearts,” he added.

Yogender Yadav, known as a confidant of AAP leader and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, hails from Saharanwas village in Haryana’s Rewari district. Yadav has been building up support among all sections of voters in Gurgaon, including young professionals who work and live here. He has been going to villages in the constituency for weeks.

The AAP is also banking on what it feels is mass disenchantment vis-a-vis corruption charges plaguing the Hooda government and the image of the Kejriwal-led party as a fighter against corruption.

The Congress is equally confident about Rao Dharampal’s victory. “We are prepared and will win with the help of traditional Congress votes and personnel relations with people,” a Congress leader said.

“We will fight the election on the strength of development work done by the Hooda government in the last 10 years,” he added.

He also urged Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi to contest against Modi in Varanasi. Digvijay Singh is not a strong contender against Modi from Varanasi, added Singh.

On Wednesday, a report said Congress leader Digvijay Singh has conveyed his willingness to the party members to take on Modi in Varanasi.

However, there has been no official confirmation from the Congress regarding the issue.

The Congress has declared its resolve to put up a formidable candidate against the BJP’s PM nominee in the Lok Sabha polls and ruled out support to Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal.

Notably, Kejriwal has already vowed to defeat Modi.

Kejriwal has said that he will hold a rally in Varanasi to decide if people want him to take on Modi, who the BJP has fielded in the Hindu holy town in Uttar Pradesh.

Congress leadership has already shortlisted three candidates for Varanasi to take on Modi and the final choice will be announced soon.

“There are many names under consideration for Varanasi seat. Congress will field a strong candidate and we will fight with full strength,” party spokesman and Union Minister Anand Sharma told reporters.

To a question as to why Congress is not announcing its candidate and whether it could support Kejriwal’s candidature, Sharma said, “Is there any dearth of candidates? It will be declared in the party list in time. The question does not arise (of supporting Kejriwal). Congress will fight the battle on its own strength. Congress is a national party and will fight on the ground.”

A senior party leader said on the condition of anonymity that the party will put up “strong” candidates against Modi in both Varanasi and the Gujarat seat from which he would be contesting.

Yesterday, the AICC had urged all like minded parties to support its nominee in Varanasi in the “battle against communalism”.

“Do not be surprised if Varanasi witnesses a similar spectacle as Ghaziabad from where BJP chief Rajnath Singh ran away after Congress fielded Raj Babbar,” party spokesman Randeep Surjewala had said.

The remarks of Surjewala came two days after party General Secretary Madhusudan Mistry had declared that the Congress will give a “good fight” to Modi on Varanasi seat and did not rule out fielding an ‘outsider’.

Among the local candidates, the names of Rajesh Mishra and Ajay Rai are doing the rounds. A section in the Congress wants an influential leader pitched against Modi, while others want a celebrity to be fielded against him.

A section views that after the exit of BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi from the electoral contest from the holy city, the Congress fielding a Brahmin candidate could be advantageous.

Senior Congress leader Anil Shastri in a tweet had said “If BSP and SP are serious on defeating Modi from Varanasi, they alongwith Congress should put up a joint candidate against him”.

AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal has declared that he was ready to take on Modi in Varanasi but linked his final call to the people’s approval there.

“We don’t want to impose anything on Manipur. We are proud of the language and culture of Manipur as we are proud of all others,” Gandhi said, according to a release here.

“India is garden of flowers; big, small, different colours. We respect each of these flowers. Our opposition wants only one kind,” Gandhi said.

“Hospitals with 100 beds have been built in five districts, and sports complexes were being built in every district of the state, home to Olympian boxer Mary Kom,” he added.

S.No|State|LS Constituency|AAP Candidate

1 Bihar|Patna Sahib|Parveen Amanullah

2 Bihar|Siwan|Rahul Kriti Singh

3 Bihar|Vaishali|Rajmangal Prasad

4 Bihar|Jhanjharpur|Tiliya Devi

5 Bihar|Sitamarhi|Kishori Das

6 J&K|Anantnag|Tanveer Maqbool Dar

7 J&K|Jammu|Harbans Lal Bhagat

8 Jharkhand|Khunti|Dayamani Barla

9 Jharkhand|HAZARIBAGH|Mithilesh Kumar Dangi

10 Jharkhand|Chatra|Kumari Seema Chandravashi

11 Jharkhand|PALAMAU|Kishundhari Ram

12 Jharkhand|KODARMA|Vijay Chaursia

13 Jharkhand|GIRIDIH|Surjit Singh

14 Jharkhand|Ranchi|Amanullah Aman

15 Kerala|Vadakara|Ali Akbar

16 Kerala|Ponnani|Shylock PV

17 Maharashtra|Latur|Deepratna Nilangekar

18 Maharashtra|Kolahpur|Narain Gundu Powar

19 MP|TIKAMGARH|Ramesh Verma

NEW DELHI: It’s the lie in the Aam Aadmi Party satyagraha, and it’s been nailed in the Delhi High Court. The Delhi government on Tuesday told the high court that the AAP government did not allocate any funds to finance the Rs 6 crore subsidy that it had announced for those who did not pay their electricity bills from October 2012 to May 2013. The lack of funds means no one will benefit from the scheme.

Don’t pay your electricity bills, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal had told Delhi’s power consumers as he went about climbing electric poles and getting his pictures taken restoring power connections last year. Over 24,000 didn’t, between October 2012 and December 2013. Then Kejriwal came to power.

In February this year, AAP had announced a reward for these power bill defaulters, declaring that those who did not pay their power bills between October 2012 and April 2013 will have to pay only half the amount.

This scheme was to benefit those who had supported the Aam Aadmi Party’s Bijli Satyagraha, a campaign against allegedly inflated electricity bills. The AAP decision was meant to benefit 24,036 people across the capital.

On Tuesday, the counsel for the state submitted an affidavit before a division bench of the high court comprising acting Chief Justice B. D. Ahmed and Justice Sidharth Mridul that former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s decision to offer 50 per cent waiver on power arrears for people who did not pay their bills from October 2012 to December 2013 cannot be implemented due to non- allocation of funds for the same in the budget for 2013- 14.

Taking into note the above submission, the High Court continued its stay on AAP’s decision to give 50 per cent waiver on pending electricity bills of 24,036 consumers. The Court has fixed the matter for final hearing on May 22 this year.
Filing the affidavit on behalf of the Delhi government, Madhu Sudan, deputy secretary of power, told the court, “The competent authority of the government had not made any provision in the budget for release of funds for the purpose and in the absence of the availability of funds, therefore, in the present circumstances, it is not possible to implement the decision of the cabinet for providing relief to the electricity consumers who stopped paying their bills anytime between October 2012 and May 2013 till December 2013.”

The bench was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by advocate Vivek Narayan Sharma, who also sought quashing the Delhi government’s decision to close power theft cases registered against 2,508 consumers last year. The plea said that such an action of the government was like “sponsoring and abetting criminal or terrorism acts and acts against rule of law and constitution.”

Power tariff in Delhi was a prominent campaign issue for AAP in the run up to the Delhi Assembly elections with Kejriwal promising he would slash power tariffs by 50 per cent after being voted to power. After coming to power, the AAP government has come down heavily on power discoms in Delhi, seeking a CAG audit of their accounts.

As per the PIL in the Court, the waiver would have imposed a burden of Rs 6 crore on the state exchequer.