100 apply for Congress tickets
Jalandhar, October 26
After the Congress decided to extend the last date for applying for tickets to contest in the forthcoming municipal corporation (MC) polls to October 31, as many as 75 more applications were received at the party office on Thursday.
Till Wednesday, which was previous last day to apply for the tickets, only 25 applications were received for 85 MC wards. With this, the total number of applications has touched the 100 mark. District Congress Committee president Rajinder Beri said, “There was a huge rush of applicants today. Most of them were under an impression that today was the last day. So, they finally made it to the party office today.”
Beri said, “Our party has now extended the last date to file application for ticket to October 31. Several party workers interested in contesting the MC polls have taken forms. We expect the response to jump further in the next five days.”
The district leadership has also urged PCC chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring to take up the issue of higher application fee being charged by the party. The party is accepting Rs 10,000 from the general category and Rs 5,000 from the reserved category applicants.
Local Congress leaders have urged that this amount be halved. Beri said, “Our proposal is pending. We are hopeful that the state high command would agree to it for seeking better response. If the fee is halved, we would return the extra amount taken from all candidates.”
The Congress leaders said so far, there were 10 wards from where not a single application had been filed. “We have asked the respective halqa in-charges to look for good prospective candidates from these wards and make them apply for tickets.”
