By IANS,
Chennai : It’s the season of Congress’ dummy candidates becoming official to contest the April 13 Tamil Nadu assembly polls.
The latest one is Syed Zia Ul-Haq who had filed as a substitute candidate on behalf of Congress party for the Krishnagiri constituency, around 275 km from here.
The official candidate was his wife Haseena Syed, who Wednesday withdrew from the poll race in favour of her husband.
Congress cadres in Krishnagiri were up in arms against Haseena’s candidature. Following the strong protest, the party replaced her with Maqbool Jan who did not file his nomination on time.
Speaking to IANS, Jan said: “I did not expect the party’s ticket. I did not prepare the necessary documents to file my nomination.”
Following this, Haseena was considered as the Congress’ official candidate.
In a sudden turn of events, she withdrew her nomination along with 16 rebel candidates, leaving the dummy candidate Syed Zia Ul-Haq to be the official candidate.
Curiously, the candidature of Tamil Nadu Congress president K.V. Thangkabalu for the Mylapore constituency is also somewhat similar to this.
He became the official Congress candidate after his wife Jayanthi’s nomination was rejected on the ground that she had not signed some papers.
Jayanthi was earlier announced as the party’s official candidate while Thangkabalu filed his nomination as a substitute, triggering strong protests among the party cadres.
The confusion in the Congress camp has the DMK camp worried as it was forced to part with 63 seats to the former.
The DMK is contesting in only 119 seats. “We expect the Congress to win around 20 seats in the elections. We are aware about their internal problems,” a DMK leader said.