BJP Seeks Cancellation Of Nominations Of Trinamool MP, Another Candidate

The West Bengal BJP on Wednesday said it has approached the Election Commission (EC) demanding the cancellation of nominations of two Trinamool Congress candidates on the grounds of serious defects in their paper.

Speaking to media persons on Wednesday afternoon, BJP State General Secretary Jagannath Chattopadhyay said that the first one is Trinamool Congress candidate from Kolkata-Dakshin, Mala Roy, who is also the sitting MP from the constituency.

"Besides being an MP she is also the chairperson of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). This office is deemed to be an 'office of profit'. She had filed her nomination this time without resigning from that post. Even if she says that she is not drawing any salary as the chairman of KMC, she will not be out of the ambit of that 'office of profit," Mr Chattopadhyay said.

The second candidate of Trinamool Congress, whose cancellation of nomination has also been demanded by the state BJP, is the ruling party candidate from Basirhat Lok Sabha in North 24 Parganas district, Haji Nurul Islam, who had been the Trinamool Congress MP from the same constituency from 2009 to 2014.

According to Mr Chattopadhyay, anyone filing the nomination and who had been in any government, legislative or parliamentary position before, has to produce the "no dues certificate" from the government for the last 10 years along with his nomination.

"However, Haji Nurul Islam has not submitted that 'no dues certificate'. If you remember our first candidate for Birbhum Lok Sabha constituency, Debasish Dhar, a former Indian Police Service officer, got his nomination cancelled because he also could not produce that 'no dues certificate' from the state government, following which we had to change our candidate," Mr Chattopadhyay said.

He said that already the BJP has approached the EC pointing out these deficiencies in the nominations of Ms Roy and Mr Islam. "We will go to the extreme point in the matter including the Supreme Court of India," Mr Chattopadhyay said.

Till the time the report was filed, there was no reaction from Ms Roy, Mr Islam or any other Trinamool Congress leader on the issue.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)