A day after the BJP’s Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed in the Surat Lok Sabha seat, Congress candidate Nilesh Kumbhani – whose nomination papers were rejected on technical grounds – has gone incommunicado, prompting the local workers to hold a protest outside his residence.
Mr. Dalal was declared the winner after the remaining candidates in the fray withdrew their nomination papers on April 22. The Congress workers, who protested outside Mr. Kumbhani’s locked house in Poona locality of Surat city on April 23, called him a “traitor” and “murderer of democracy”.
“He is missing, his phone is switched off and his location remains unknown. He was last seen on April 21 when his nomination papers were rejected,” said local Congress workers who are furious at Mr. Kumbhani’s “irresponsible conduct.” The party workers even pasted posters at the gate of his locked house that read “ janta ka gaddar (people’s traitor).”
Mr. Kumbhani’s nomination papers were rejected on April 21 after his three proposers denied that they signed the papers. The three proposers are also missing since April 19.
In Delhi, the party has approached the Election Commission (EC) seeking its intervention in Surat where all rival candidates opted out of the contest one by one, paving the way for BJP’s Mr. Dalal to be declared the winner without election.
In its plea to the EC, the Opposition party has asked the the poll body to use powers under Article 324 “for setting aside the order passed by the Returning Officer cancelling Mr. 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”.
However, Congress leaders and workers in Surat are fuming at the party leadership’s inability to ensure basic things like proper nomination papers, or show due diligence in checking proposers who endorsed his nomination.
“This was bound to happen when the party leadership listens to people like Kadir Pirzada [Gujarat Congress working president] and Jawahar Upadhyay [Gujarat Congress vice-president]. Both are spent force but still decide candidates for local municipal and panchayat elections to Assembly and Lok Sabha elections,” said Aslam Cyclewala, a local Congress leader.
He added that most of the party workers are frustrated and demoralised after this episode. “The fact that there is no candidate and no election is hugely demoralising for the party workers,” he said.
“Because of this traitor, citizens of the Surat city have been deprived of voting,” said Dinesh Savalia, a former Municipal Councillor of the Congress in Surat.
According to locals in the party, Mr. Pirzada had suggested Mr. Kumbhani’s name for the Surat Lok Sabha seat despite the fact that the latter was defeated in the Assembly election in 2022, losing even his deposit. Mr. Pirzada is a leading player of the Opposition party in Surat city.
Patidar quota activist Mr. Kumbhani had risen to fame in 2015 during the Patidar quota agitation. As a member of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) that spearheaded the State-wide agitation, he was one of the key players behind the protest, and worked along with Hardik Patel, now a BJP legislator. He had become a municipal councillor in 2015.
“He was not the right choice from the beginning. We had even told the Congress leadership that he will strike a deal and will not contest the polls,” said Dinesh Kachchadia, a local AAP leader, who had defected from the Congress earlier.
The day Mr. Kumbhani’s nomination papers were rejected by the returning officer, Mr. Kachchdia in a social media post alleged that Mr. Kumbhani had “struck a deal for ₹5 crore” with the BJP.
“It was a fixed match from the beginning. He was never going to contest the polls. He used party ticket to strike deal,” Mr. Kachchdia told The Hindu on April 23. He said Mr. Kumbhani’s candidature was announced a month ago but he was hardly active in the area. He did not even launch his campaign and hardly held any election-related event in any of the seven Assembly segments that make up the Surat Lok Sabha constituency.
On April 23, the AAP leaders demanded criminal action against Mr. Kumbhani for forgery. “It appears that he forged the signatures of the proposers. He should face the action for forgery,” said Manoj Sorathia, the AAP organising secretary of Gujarat.
As an alliance partner of the Congress, the AAP leaders also asked the Congress to immediately sack Mr. Kumbhani from the party.
