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The candidate from Seelampur, Haji Afzal, is a `bad character' with 22 heinous cases, including three murder and four attempt to murder cases. Afzal (34) has also been running a gang of extortionists for several years.

Crime record
BADLI: Rajesh Yadav (506 IPC; criminal intimidation)
RITHALA: Ranvir Sraoha (306 IPC; Abetment to suicide, 148/452 IPC; rioting)
BAWANA: Ramchander Khandik (case under Excise Act)
GOKUL PURI: Mukesh Ahlawat (For defacement of walls)
MATIA MAHAL: Abhay Singh Yadav (506 IPC; criminal intimidation, 307 IPC; attempt to murder, 302 IPC; murder)
PATEL NAGAR: Madan Valmiki (3 cases for defacement of walls)
MOTI NAGAR: Virender Mahajan (rash and negligent driving)
TUGHLAQABAD: Sahi Pehlwan (4 heinous cases)
SEELAMPUR: Haji Afzal (22 heinous cases)

"He has amassed a lot of wealth through his criminal ways," a senior police officer said. Mateen Ahmed from Congress and Sita Ram Gupta from BJP are other main candidates from Seelampur.

Congress's Ahmed said, "It seems Delhi is going the Bihar and UP way. He (Afzal) has been trying to threaten my voters and workers but no one dares complain against him. The voters are too scared to openly support anyone else."

Afzal could not be reached for comment.

What has raised eye-brows of political observers is a statement made by Chief Minister Raman Singh at a press conference in the state capital on the poll-eve that the BSP was emerging as a third power and may affect results on some seats.

The Chief Minister had made a similar statement while talking to The Tribune earlier. Observers say that the BJP is trying to boost the image of Mayawati's party, which was an indication of political permutations and combinations to follow. According to them, the Chief Minister's publically-favourable statement towards the BSP showed that the BJP will not hesitate in seeking the help of Mayawati if the need be.

How the BSP would react to these positive feelers or whether an understanding has already been reached between the "kamal" and the "haathi" in the state would only be known after December 8, when votes are counted. But party supremo Mayawati is aware of the BSP's growing influence in the state dominated by SCs and backward classes, which is why she decided to contest all 90 seats independently.

In an effort to reach out to the voters, the candidates will send a voice message to all having MTNL landline connection and request them to convey their suggestions and grievances.

If a voter responds to the call, another voice message will be sent by the candidate within 24 hours in which the aspirant will give a brief remark to the electorate.

"We have decided on the MTNL landline connections as constituency-wise details of the customers are available in case of the state-run telephone company," BJP's IT Cell Convenor Vivek Goyal told PTI.

He said the party has asked all its candidates to take advantage of the innovative service.

"We have requested all the candidates to use this innovative technology to reach out to the voters and convey BJP's message on their own voice," Goyal said.

The IT Cell has already entered into an agreement with a private software company which will record the messages of the candidates and send them as individual voice SMS to MTNL landlines as outbound calls.

An official of the Kirusa Software Private Limited said the response from the candidates was very encouraging and they will start recording the voice message of the candidates from tomorrow.

The Congress-NCP government's decision in Maharashtra to press for stricter implementation of an existing government resolution (GR) dating back to 1968, which asks that 50% all supervisory jobs and 80% of all other jobs, including supervisory posts, be kept aside for locals in small medium and large industries, could result in RJD, LJP and SP criticising their ally. It may put the Congress in a difficult situation in poll-bound Delhi, which has large migrant populations from Bihar and UP, if the matter is raked up by other parties like the BSP.

MNS' anti-North Indian campaign is a sensitive issue in Bihar and UP and has seen political rivals such as RJD's Lalu Prasad, LJP's Ram Vilas Paswan and JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar come together on a platform against the developments in Maharashtra, train their guns on MNS chief Raj Thackeray and criticise the Vilasrao Deshmukh government for `not doing enough' to stop the new regional party.

In UP, the SP and BSP might not have joined hands over the issue, but each has separately raised it with the Congress-led Centre. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul have both been quite critical of Mr Thackeray's brand of politics, but that has not stopped their party in Maharashtra from taking a step that might be labeled as a soft brand of the kind of regional politics espoused by MNS.

PCC president Suresh Pachauri, union ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamalnath, state Congress campaign committee chief Rahul Singh and leader of opposition Jamuna Devi -- all of them are sure that they deserve the top job more than anyone else. Digvijay Singh -- who had led the Congress government for 10 years -- says he is out of the race.

In contrast, there is no dispute in the BJP as to who will be the CM if the party returns to power. There is absolutely no challenge to Shivraj Singh Chauhan's leadership.

The battle among the wannabe chief ministers had begun well before the elections were announced. Rahul Singh avoided sharing the platform with Pachauri and the latter returned the compliment. Their rivalry divided the party into two clearly identifiable factions.

While Pachauri, being the PCC chief, believes himself to be the "natural claimant" to the top post, Rahul Singh is banking on the support of his father, the ailing Congress veteran Arjun Singh.

Obama, on his part, has refined the digital act further -- a fact revealed during his presidential announcement speech in Springfield last October when he said: "Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age..."

Youth media practitioners and Obama realised that the power of the internet to share stories is the key to mobilise youth and others. The results show. For instance, now over 280,000 people have created accounts on barackobama.com.

These users, in turn, have created over 6,500 grassroots volunteer groups and have organised more than 13,000 offline events using the site. Over 15,000 policy ideas have been submitted through the website. Through Obama's leadership, many of the presidential debates are freely available online for mash-ups, commentary, and other uses by ordinary citizens, bloggers, and others.

The expectation that a President "gets it" regarding IT is a fairly new one. So when, Obama announced via the microblogging site Twitter that he would alert his supporters via text message immediately after he chose his running mate for vice-president, followers like Shruti Avdhani (studying in Chicago), found common footing.

Avdhani, who is also a Facebook campaigner for Obama, was drawn to Facebook when she heard about it from her friends. On Facebook alone, there are 18 million young people between the ages of 18-29. "Everyone was discussing the campaign and Obama's policies. I decided to join the camp," she says as a matter-of-factly.

Describing Alva's allegation as "baseless", Scindia said, if there was any truth in it, she should furnish proof to substantiate it.

"Strict steps were being taken in the Congress against those indulging in indiscipline and even senior leaders are not spared," the minister told reporters here yesterday during an election rally.

Recently, Digvijay Singh had said that Alva should first furnish proof and then make an allegation of this nature.

In a detailed representation to Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, the party's in-house legal expert Abhishek Singhvi pointed out that Congress had never asked for an inquiry into the police action at Batla House in the Capital. "This is clearly false, tendentious and seeks to communalize the issue," he said recalling that both the UPA government and Congress had rejected such demands made by some individuals.

Clarifying that there were no linkages between Congress and Jamia Milia, Singhvi said that even the university had made it clear that the cost of legal aid to its arrested students was not being borne by the government funds for the institution but from some other sources. "The Congress party objects strongly to the blatant violation of the model code of conduct by issuing such advertisements," Singhvi said seeking the commission's intervention. "The allegation is laughable since the decisionmaking by Jamia University has nothing to do with the Congress party," he said claiming that the ads were intended to mislead the people.

AICC general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi made the announcement. "Sonia Gandhi has accorded her approval to the admission of Vishwendra Singh into the party with immediate effect," he said.

Vishwendra, a scion of Bharatpur royal family who was a political advisor to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, had resigned from BJP yesterday charging assembly poll nominations were sold.

A known detractor of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, 72-year-old Babar lost the race for Congress nomination from the Jangpura seat to another sitting MLA Tarvinder Singh Marwah after heavy lobbying.

She will be out of the city during campaigning and will return only after November 29, the polling day. ``I will not campaign as I will be out of Delhi for a couple of weeks,'' said Babar, a former president of Delhi Congress.

Babar was seeking a ticket from the Jangpura constituency as her Minto Road seat was dissolved in the delimitation exercise.

 Marwah, who is close to Dikshit, bagged the seat with a section of leaders arguing that he would be able to get a sizeable chunk of 14,000 Sikh voters in the constituency.

Babar's supporters said they were surprised over the party's decision to give the ticket to Marwah.

``Marwah cannot be compared with Babar. She is a motherly figure and well respected person,'' said a party worker, requesting anonymity.

Marwah's opponent and Shiromani Akali Dal candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa said Babar's decision to not campaign in the election will help him in wresting the seat from the Congress.

Several supporters of Babar said they would extend their support to one of the independents rather than supporting Marwah.

Obama aka `the digital candidate' left no stone unturned in the race to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For a man who managed to draw crowds in tens of thousands wherever he spoke, Obama realized early in his campaign that his message of `change' had to spread well beyond Democrats and the undecided voters. He wanted America's youth to be on board and he ensured they did.

He reached out to them by making himself accessible online. Obama used Web 2.0 with a passion, engaging and interacting with them on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and also used new platforms like podcasts, online video and text messages to get his message across.

So, is there a lesson there for Indian politicians, especially the younger lot led by Rahul Gandhi?
Rahul and his team of young Congress leaders like Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia are known to data-mine and number crunch to understand their support bases. Even the BJP's Arun Jaitley is said to maintain an extensive data base of electorates and voting patterns in states and constituencies.

Some of them have Facebook groups dedicated to them, but none with more than 500 supporters- a pittance in comparison to Obama's three million.

Are Indian politicians missing out on an opportunity at a time when voter apathy is only growing? There are actually messages on Rahul Gandhi's Facebook group page (which has less than 100 members) where a member has requested him to log on so they can interact with him.

So why not organize their appeal for votes in a more effective manner?

Not only will they be reaching out to an enormous and often untapped vote bank, (India has about 50 million internet users according to a Research and Markets report) but they will also be able to build a database which can prove invaluable in the future.

Obama went as far as hiring Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook as his online campaign strategist.

I'm not sure if Mr. Hughes will be available for the Indian general elections, but isn't a future Prime Minister ready to take his campaign online?

The minister has been booked for obstructing and threatening an officer from doing her duty.

Pawar met the Sub Divisonal Magistrate in Dewas and demanded that she reject a candidate's nomination papers since he had submitted them late. There was an argument that turned into a show of strength and the minister got personal.

"She is nothing to look at. There is nothing to see," said minister and everyone around burst into laughter.

However, the election commission is not amused.

"The Indian election commission has taken this matter very seriously and is going through all the details and soon will give their verdict," said J S Mathur, Election Commissioner, Madhya Pradesh.

BJP president Rajnath Singh refused to comment and the party has so far been non-committal.

"I am not aware of the facts. I am sure the party has taken note of that and will respond at an appropriate time," said BJP national spokesperson Rudra Prasad Singh.

The BJP is in the reckoning for second chance at power. When so much is at stake on November 27. It cannot afford to court any controversy that may just make the battle for ballot more tough than it already is.

Alva submitted her resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. However, no confirmations have come on the same and no word has come on whether the party has accepted the resignation.

Alva on Monday earned a reprieve with the party leadership making it clear that it will not pursue the case of indiscipline against her for her startling allegation that party nominations for the Karnataka elections were sold for money.

The announcement of reprieve for Alva came in the backdrop of her meeting earlier in the day with defence minister AK Anthony, who heads the disciplinary action panel.

A clear evidence of Alva getting out of trouble was available a few days ago when she was made part of the war council constituted by the party leadership to closely monitor and manage the campaign for assembly elections in six states.

The other reason for the leadership to brush the issue under the carpet for the time being is the fact that quite a few senior party functionaries from the states have rushed to her defence insisting that money indeed changed hands at the time of ticket distribution.

Siddaramaiah, a prominent Backward leader of the party in Karnataka, and Yogendra Makwana, a Rajasthan veteran heading the partys SC/ST cell, made similar complaints in the wake of Alva's outburst. Facing the tough electoral challenge in six states months before the general election, the party is keen to paper over the problem for the time being.

The Nehru-Gandhi heir looks after the IYC and National Students Union of India (NSUI) and has been using the `youth plank' to create a niche for himself in Indian politics. In a sign of his growing role in the party organisation, the Congress has not only fielded IYC presidents of the six election-going states -- Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir and Mizoram -- but has also given tickets to other candidates recommend by the youth wing and NSUI.

In Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, the contesting IYC presidents Anil Choudhary and Jeetu Patwari have been appointed after Mr Gandhi took over as AICC general secretary in-charge of the party's youth and students' wing. Their appointment took place after a rigorous selection process which Mr Gandhi oversaw.

In other states, the party is fielding IYC members who occupied their posts before Mr Gandhi took over about a year back, but all names were routed through the Congress scion, IYC president Ashok Tawar said.