Congress suspends Surat candidate days after his disqualification from Lok Sabha election

The Congress on Friday suspended party member Nilesh Kumbhani days after he was disqualified as a candidate for the Surat Lok Sabha seat, reported The Hindu.

On April 21, the Surat electoral officer rejected Kumbhani’s nomination because of discrepancies in the signatures of those who proposed his candidature. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate Mukesh Dalal won the seat unopposed the next day after all the other candidates withdrew their nominations.

On Friday, the Congress’ disciplinary committee issued a notice to Kumbani, saying that he either connived with the BJP or was “completely careless” while filing his form, reported The Indian Express. The panel said that despite this, he was given ample time to present his case, but he “disappeared in a dramatic way” without explaining his actions to the party.

Kumbhani has been suspended from the Congress for six years.

The Congress’ disciplinary committee said that the rejection of his nomination was unfortunate. “After that, the BJP used its entire machinery and got other candidates to withdraw their forms using allurements, fear and harassment, thus murdering democracy,” the party said. “The BJP has snatched away the right to vote from the Surat voter.”

Kumbhani, on his part, blamed local Congress leaders for his nomination form being rejected, according to The Hindu. He claimed that he had informed the state leadership about the BJP trying to “manage” his proposers.

“I will not speak against the Congress but I will say that the local leaders in the city were not cooperative,” he said.

Two of Kumbhani’s proposers were his relatives – his brother-in-law Jagdish Savaliya and his nephew Dhruvin Dhameliya. The third proposer was a man named Ramesh Polara, Kumbhani’s friend and partner in a construction business.

One of the independent candidates who subsequently dropped out of the electoral contest, stock broker Kishore Dayani, told Scroll that a person associated with the BJP met him on April 21 and persuaded him to withdraw.

Dayani added that a Congress politician also met him and prodded him to contest the election and not withdraw. “I thought about it and decided to withdraw,” he said.