On the second day of nominations for the Governing Council seats at the NCUI headquarters, the picture of “would-be-successful candidates” became clearer to an extent. Uncertainly, however, prevails for 3 to 4 seats.
While Ved Prakash Setia was busy accepting nomination papers from the likes of H K Patil, Satish R Chandra, Ashok Dabas and Sanjeev Kushalkar and others, co-operators from across the country thronged the chamber of the outgoing President Dr Chandra Pal Singh seeking his support in their fight.
Having served two terms as the President, many candidates felt Chandra Pal’s words would carry weight with voters. This reporter spotted several candidates camping in his room. They included Sanjeev Kushalkar, Pramod Kumar Singh, Vishal Singh, Swarn Kamal Saha, G D Bakshi, among others. Even H K Patil came to meet Chandra Pal after filing nomination.
“Cooperative politics is different from electoral politics; your words and commitments define who you are. If I do not keep my words with one, how can I be taken seriously by others”, said Chandrapal hinting at his prior commitment given to Mudit Verma, against whom Chandrasekhar Singh is contesting.
“Left to ourselves we would have got the entire board elected without a vote cast”, claimed Chandra Pal pointing
Chandra Pal’s sense of well-being has however, been dented a little by the entry of Sahakar Bharati in the scene. Sahakar Bharati has made it tough on a few seats where voting seems inevitable. These include multistate, and some of the state co-op unions.
Coming to nominations, those who seemed to have emerged victorious so far are G H Amin from Gujarat, Sunil Singh of Biscomaun, Sanjeev Kushalkar of Labour Fed, Pune, Mudit Verma from Lucknow and Jeena Postangbam from Imphal.
Those who face a tough battle ahead are S N Sharma from Chhattisgarh, Pramod Singh from Uttarakhand, Swarna Kamal Saha from West Bengal.
Meanwhile, the election campaign has intensified for the constituencies which have a large number of voters. Nominations will end today on 19th Nov. Scrutiny and final list of eligible candidates will be published by tomorrow evening. Nov 21 has been kept for withdrawal and the evening of the same day it would be known how many candidates are finally in fray.