Aspirants frustrated as parties delay candidate selection

With less than a month to go for the twin polls in Orissa, aspiring candidates of all the three major political parties were getting impatient over delay in announcement of nominees.
    
Neither the ruling BJD, nor Congress nor BJP have announced list of their candidates for the coming Assembly and Lok Sabha polls to be held in the state in two phases on April 16 and 23.
    
While BJD was busy scanning about 4,000 applications for 147 assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats, the number of applicants in BJP was over 2,500 and about 2,000 in Congress, sources in the parties said.
    
Frustration among BJD aspirants today came to the fore when a group of youths staged a demonstration in front of the house of party MP Pyari Mohan Mohatra.

Demanding early release of candidate list, they wanted a talk with party high command.
    
"As the chief minister and Mohapatra are not meeting the applicants, we are unable to know the fate of our possible candidature," an angry BJD leader said.

They, however, dropped agitation after Mohapatra assured them that the candidates' list would be declared soon.
   
While Congress is likely to release its first list of candidates for Lok Sabha in Delhi, BJD and BJP held meetings this afternoon to finalise candidates.

"Our list will be finalised on March 22, a day before the nomination filing begins," BJP's national vice-president Jual Oram told reporters.

BJD's secretary general Damodar Rout, however, said finalisation of candidates would not be any problem as party chief Naveen Patnaik has started visiting districts.

"While the election is less than a month to go, we are unable to even print posters and other campaign material," said a BJD MLA who was not sure whether he would get ticket.

Meanwhile, the crowd of aspirants was also swelling at the state Congress headquarters here as the aspirants were not certain over their candidature.

"The list of candidates of Congress will be released at Delhi," PCC media cell chairman Kailash Acharya said.
    
Though Congress had apparently no problem in finalising its candidate list, BJD and BJP were facing difficulties in getting suitable candidates after break in their alliance.

While BJD had last time fielded candidates for 84 Assembly seats, BJP had fought 63 segments. "We need to choose a suitable candidate each in 84 places where the party had not fielded its candidates in two last elections," a member of BJP's candidate selection commitee said.
     
Both the parties were also facing the same problem for Lok Sabha constituencies too. BJD had fought in 12 seats and BJP in nine seats last time.