After the last day for withdrawing nominations for the Ghaziabad Assembly by-election ended on Wednesday, 14 potential candidates were left in the fray as none of them chose to withdraw their nomination papers, district election officials said on Wednesday. did not
By-elections will be held in the district on November 13 and counting will be held on November 23. The assembly seat fell vacant after incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Atul Garg contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Ghaziabad and won the seat.
A total of 19 candidates filed their nomination papers for the by-election and five of them were rejected during scrutiny due to discrepancies in the nomination forms, election officials said.
Thereafter, 14 candidates had the option to withdraw their nomination papers till October 30, but none chose to do so.
“As a result, all 14 candidates are now in the final fray. With 14 candidates and an option for NOTA, we will use only one EVM unit for the upcoming elections,” said Santosh Pandey, City Magistrate and Returning Officer.
The list of 14 candidates includes Singh Raj of Samajwadi Party, Ravi Kumar of All India Majlis Ittehad Muslimeen, Sanjeev Sharma of Bharatiya Janata Party and Satyapal Chaudhary of Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram). Others, from lesser-known parties or independents.
Voter turnout is expected to be lower this time, as voting is on a working day (Wednesday), but officials said they would be running awareness campaigns to encourage voters to come out in large numbers to vote. are
According to the district administration, there are 461,360 voters in the assembly seat for Ghaziabad assembly seat (based on revision of voter lists till October 15).
“As per the latest revision, the total number of voters in the assembly seat is 461,644,” the returning officer said.
The district also has 119 polling centers and 506 polling booths. Four Zonal Magistrates and 22 Sector Magistrates were deputed on duty besides 16 other senior officers entrusted with various poll related duties.