Independent candidates may mar poll prospects of many

ALLAHABAD: Candidates of political parties are facing a threat from Independent candidates in the 12 seats of Allahabad.
Known popularly as vote-katwa (candidates who do not win but get some votes), there have been several cases in the past, when the total votes received by them was more than the victory margin of the winning candidates.
Assembly seats of Meja, Karchana, City South, Bara, Phaphamau and Soraon were seats where these ‘vote katwa’ candidates played the spoilsports and turned the political equations of the winner and the runner-up.The role of vote-katwa could be gauged by looking at the margin of the winning candidates.
For instance, in the last assembly election, the Karchana seat was won by Deepak Patel of BSP, who had defeated Ujjwal Raman Singh of SP by the margin of just 404 votes. There were 10 Independent candidates who had contested from this seat and the total votes polled by was 18,146, 44% more than the victory margin.
In of Meja Assembly seat, Girish Chandra Pandey alias Gama Pandey had defeated Anand Kumar alias Collector Pandey with a margin of 740 votes.
These vote katwa candidates are carefully picked up by the major players in the fray, said Yogeshwar Tiwari, faculty member of AU.