25 of 27 candidates lost deposit in Faridabad

Tribune News Service
Faridabad, May 27

Only the winner and the runner-up out of 27 contenders at the Faridabad Lok Sabha seat were able to save their security deposit.

Krishan Pal Gurjar of the BJP, who won by a margin of 6,38,239 votes, not only created a record in the history of the Faridabad Lok Sabha segment, but also reduced the vote share of all other contestants to just 31.2 per cent.

This included the vote share (20.7 per cent) of Congress candidate Avtar Singh Bhadana, who finished a distant second with only 2,74,983 votes. Out of the total 13,28,127 votes, Gurjar got 9,13,222 votes (68.8 per cent).

Though Bhadana managed to save his security deposit, all the other candidates in the fray remained well below the cut-off limit of 2.21 lakh votes required to save the security deposit.

Every candidate is required to submit security deposit (Rs 25,000 for general category, Rs 10,000 for reserved category) at the time of filing his or her nomination papers.

Mandhir Maan of the BSP, who came third with 86,752 votes (6.64 per cent) also remained well below the target of saving the deposit (16.6 per cent).

Mahender Singh Chauhan of INLD with 12,070 votes finished fourth. AAP’s Navin Jaihind who polled 11,112 votes secured the fifth spot.

The 22 candidates at the bottom could not cross the NOTA figure of 4,984 votes. In 2014 also, 22 out of the 27 candidates had trailed behind the NOTA count of 3,328 votes.

Ruby Baig, the only woman candidate, got just 1,192 votes. She said as she was an outsider and had no local contacts, the number of votes she got was good.