Candidates collect nomination papers for the municipal corporation polls in Cuttack on Monday. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Jan. 13: The Congress is not willing to say it loud, but the post-Phailin relief scam is having its effect on the party’s choice of candidates for the February corporation polls.

Five of seven Congress councillors in the erstwhile Cuttack Municipal Corporation do not figure on the first list of candidates released by the party on Sunday night.

Sources in the party said that councillors whose names figured in the alleged scam involving embezzlement of cyclone relief materials in October last year had been dropped.

President of the City Congress Committee Md Moquim, however, brushed aside the talk of relief scam spectre haunting the candidates’ list and stuck to the party’s official position of the delimitation effect.

“The five sitting councillors have been dropped due to delimitation. The candidates for the remaining 19 wards will be fnalised within the next two days,” Moquim said.

It is another matter that delimitation did not affect Congress councillors Hemanta Behera and Dharmananda Patra.

Both Behera and Patra have been re-nominated and will contest from new wards (Nos. 16 and 37, respectively). Their old seats have been reserved for women following delimitation.

In its first list, the City Congress Committee has named candidates for 40 of the 59 wards.

The first list of 40 candidates (23 women), including 35 new faces, consists of 10 from backward classes, four from scheduled caste and one from scheduled tribe.

After a Congress majority council in 1997, the party could win only 14 of the 48 wards in the 2003 civic polls as its breakaway group backed Independent candidates contested from 10 wards and managed to win three seats.

In 2009, the party had bagged only eight of the 54 wards. Later, Congress councillor Ashok Kumar Sharma had crossed over to the BJD.

Though the process to file nominations has begun today, the BJD and the BJP are yet to announce their list of candidates.

Hrushikesh Pradhan, a former BJP councillor who was the first to file his nomination papers today, said: “I will contest from ward No. 52 as it has been de-reserved following delimitation”.

Nomination papers were being distributed from the corporation’s Bikash Bhavan. “Nomination forms were available from one counter only. I had to wait for nearly 30 minutes to get a form for myself,” said Anuja Rout of Aama Odisha Party.

“There should be a separate counter for women in tune with the 50 per cent reservation of wards,” said Mamata Swain, the Congress candidate for ward No. 26.

Election officer and additional district magistrate Laxmidhar Mohanty said: “One platoon of police personnel will be stationed from today to oversee process to file nomination papers.”