Rajesh Kalia, BJP’s official candidate, has been convicted twice for crimes, and was part of Chandigarh Police’s A-list of ‘bad characters’ until recently.
Chandigarh: The new mayor of Chandigarh could be a man whom the police describe as a “bad character”. Rajesh Kalia is the BJP’s official candidate for the post, to which elections are set to be held on 18 January.
Kalia was all smiles as he filed his nomination papers Tuesday, accompanied by BJP MP from Chandigarh Kirron Kher. But the smiles couldn’t hide the fact that Kalia has twice been convicted for crimes, one of which was under the gambling act.
Booked several times
Kalia was first booked in 1994 under Sections 325 and 34 of the IPC and convicted in 1998. He was jailed for one year and was released on probation. Then, in 2001, he was convicted under various sections of the Gambling Act.
Apart from these two convictions, Kalia was booked four times in 1994 for rioting and criminal intimidation, in 1995 for voluntarily causing hurt and criminal intimidation, in 2001 for rioting and attempted culpable homicide, and in 2009 for house trespass, assaulting a woman with intent to outrage her modesty, criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement. On all these occasions, he was acquitted of all charges.
Thanks to all these cases, the Chandigarh Police had put him in its A-list of ‘bad characters’. He has only been moved to the B-list recently.
“The ‘B’ category basically means that the person is inactive and silent for some time. If this continues for at least one year, he can be removed from the list completely,” said Chiranjilal, inspector at the Maloya police station.
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The mayoral polls
The municipal corporation elections in Chandigarh are held every five years. However, elections to the post of the mayor are held every year.
The Chandigarh Municipal Corporation has 26 elected and nine nominated members (councillors). Out of the elected members, 20 belong to the BJP, four to the Congress, one to the Akali Dal, while one is an Independent. The nominated members do not vote in a mayoral election.
This time, the post of mayor is reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate, Out of the 20 BJP councillors, only four were eligible for mayor — Kalia, Satish Kainth, Bharat Kumar and Farmila Devi.
Who is Kalia?
The choice of Kalia had to do with several factors, and his criminal background is the least of them. A former garbage collector, he joined the RSS in 1984 as shiksha swayamsewak and started working for the BJP in 1996. He contested his first municipal poll in 2011, but lost. He tried his luck in 2016 again and won.
Kalia is the BJP’s Balmiki face in the city, and is said to control over one lakh votes of the community. So, ahead of the parliamentary polls, having a Balmiki mayor would help the BJP.
He has remained head of the SC-ST morcha of the party in Chandigarh. He is also the member the national SC working committee of the BJP, and had participated in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement as well.
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Race heats up
Kalia had the unstinted backing of BJP Chandigarh unit chief Sanjay Tandon. However, Kher, who has been at loggerheads with Tandon, was not so sure about supporting Kalia. She was said to be backing her close aide and loyalist Kainth and Farmila Devi.
However, once the final stamp of approval for Kalia’s name came from BJP’s Chandigarh affairs in-charge Prabhat Jha, the landscape changed. Within 15 minutes of Kher accompanying Kalia to file his nomination papers as the party’s official candidate, Kainth turned rebel and filed his nomination papers as an Independent.
Farmila is said to be supporting Kainth along with at least half-a-dozen BJP councillors, the lone Independent councillor, as well as the four Congress councillors. To win, a candidate needs 14 votes, as one vote belongs to the Member of Parliament, who is an ex-officio member of the House.
Last year, too, there had been a jostle for the post at the eleventh hour, when councillors loyal to Tandon led a revolt against the party’s official nominee Davesh Moudgil. The Tandon group had then fielded outgoing mayor Asha Jaswal as an independent candidate, while Moudgil was backed by Kher and senior leader Satya Pal Jain. Moudgil was eventually, elected mayor.
How dare they even nominate a person like this?
Thanks for exposing the “garbage” side of the BJP. If there’s one political party of free India that deserves to be exposed “for God’s sake”, it’s the BJP.