Namesakes may queer pitch for many candidates

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 31

It is Jarnail singh vs Jarnail Singh vs Jarnail Singh in the Rajouri Garden Assembly seat from where Akali candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa is seeking a re-election on the SAD symbol and entire Akali leadership from Punjab is campaigning for him.
The real Jarnail Singh, also known as Jarnail Singh Patarkar, who threw a shoe on ex- Home Minister P Chidambram, to project injustice to anti-sikh riots victims, already has a bad taste in his mouth over the similar ploy against him in the parliamentary elections. He had polled 3.82 lakhs votes. But another Jarnail Singh got about 85,000 votes and the third got about 6,000. Though BJP candidate Parvesh Sharma won by over 2.50 lakh votes, Jarnail Singh feels the confusion caused by the namesake candidates cost him and the party.
This Assembly elections, there are again two other Jarnail Singhs in the fray. Both are Indepdnent candidates. “We are specially educating voters to look for the symbol ‘broom’ of our party than the name. Also, earlier, all Jarnail Singhs were listed together but this time there would be other names in between.
Not just him, over 20 candidates in the current elections are facing challenge from their own name. Congress candidate Meenakshi Chandela also from Rajouri Garden, whose family name Chandela holds some command as her father Dayanand Chandela had won the seat earlier. There are two other women candidates with the same last name – Chandela. They are Livis Chandela and Suman Chandela.
Shazia Ilmi, who has left AAP had also the same problem. She lost the RK Puram Assembly seat by only 326 votes in 2013. In Tilak Nagar all the BJP, Congress and the AAP candidates are facing the same problem. BJP candidate Rajiv Babbar is up against another Rajiv Babbar, and Duli Chand of the Congress is faced with a 60-year-old mason called Duli Chand.