No BJP candidate for Sujapur, voters asked to trust conscience

Statesman News Service

MALDA, 28 OCT: The BJP, which once boasted of a strong presence on Malda district has failed to nominate a candidate for the Sujapur Assembly by-poll on 7 November.

Its leaders have decided to ask the supporters to cast conscience vote and the party as a whole is expecting some organization or the other to seek its support. So far, none has.

“Though our party policy is to maintain equidistance from the Left Front and the Congress and its allies, we ask our workers and supporters to cast conscience vote wherever we cannot nominate a candidate,” said senior BJP leader Mr Tapan Sikdar today.

The local BJP leadership, however, expects either the Congress or the CPI-M to seek its support.

Since the BJP is supporting the Congress to run the Malda Zilla Parishad and the parishad's saha-sabhadipati is an elected BJP member, it expects the Congress to seek its support in the by-poll.

The BJP district president Mr Jatindranath Ghosh, however, said: “If the CPI-M seeks our support we would ask our supporters to cast votes in favour of the CPI-M.”

Neither the Congress nor the CPI-M have approached the BJP for support till now though.

The CPI-M led Left Front and its candidate are depending more on their organizational strength than anything else. They are also cautious in seeking support.

The Congress on the other hand has its task cut out. It first has to douse the controversy that had almost denied candidate Mr AN Khan Choudhury the ticket.

Moreover, the constituency has been returning a Congress candidate for years and so the anti-incumbency factor is another hurdle for the Congress in addition to underdevelopment.