more-in The Bawana Assembly constituency, which fell vacant when an AAP MLA defected to the BJP in March, is headed for a by-election on August 23, with the Election Commission of India (ECI) announcing the schedule on Thursday. As per the ECI’s statement, the poll would be notified on Saturday, the last date for filing nominations is August 5 and the date for withdrawal of candidature is August 9. While polling will be held on August 23, the counting of votes is on August 28. In its statement, the ECI said that Electronic Voting Machines, along with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), would be used in each polling station. With the announcement, the model code of conduct was enforced in Bawana and the district in which it lies, north-west Delhi. Bawana, which is reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates, was won by the AAP’s Ved Prakash in 2015. But, before the municipal elections in April this year, he quit and jumped ship to the BJP. He is now contesting the seat on a BJP ticket, facing the AAP’s Ram Chandra and the Congress’ Surender Kumar. The AAP candidate has been a party worker, but had contested the 2008 Assembly election as the Bahujan Samaj Party’s candidate. The Congress’ candidate was the Bawana MLA from 1998 till 2013. Though losing one seat won’t make much difference to the AAP, which currently has 66 out of 70 seats, the Bawana bypoll is being taken seriously, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also visiting the constituency recently. Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, AAP leader Atishi Marlena said: “We are confident about the election and we have sensed that there is a lot of anger against Mr. Prakash as people feel he cheated by switching over. We are also banking on the work that the government has done in the area in the past two years.” The Congress, which represented the constituency for 15 years, is hoping that the previous record of Mr. Kumar will help woo voters. “We have been conducting door-to-door surveys and have got positive feedback. People still remember the development work done by our former MLA,” said Delhi Congress vice-president Chattar Singh.

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