In Delhi, the BJP released the first list of 50 candidates last night. Of the 50, twenty-seven were sitting MLAs eight sitting legislators denied tickets. Former chief minister Sahib Singh Verma and Assembly Speaker Charti Lal Goel have opted out of the race. Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj is to contest from Hauz Khas.

The Congress party was expected to release the list of their candidates for Delhi tomorrow.

Reports about resentment among BJP leaders over distribution of tickets have surfaced from Bilaspur, Chhindwara and some other places of Madhya Pradesh.Meanwhile, the Congress is hiring a small plane to carry authorisation letters (Form B) for itscandidates in distant places. The Form B, duly signed by PCC president Urmila Singh, has to be submitted by the candidate to the returning officer by 3 pm tomorrow, the deadline for filing nomination papers.

After debates and discussions spread over 10 days, the central leadership of the party finally released its first list in New Delhi early this morning. But candidates for 25-odd constituencies are yet to be named.

The Congress's handling of its ticket distribution has come in for a lot of flak here. The party started the exercise of finalising candidates quite early by appointing 80 state obervers to identify ``winning'' candidates for the 320 constituencies.

Their selections were reviewed and shortlisted by the four central observers who, with the help of AICC secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh, asked the State Election Committee to make the final recommendations. But the State Election Committee passed on the responsibility to party president Sonia Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi asked the four centralobservers and the AICC secretary, who was then in Bhopal, to talk to the members of the State Election Committee individually and then submit their report. The names were scrutinised by the screening committee and were placed before the Congress Working Committee.

But even the highest decision making body of the party could not take a decision and the matter was ultimately submitted to a sub-committee constituted for the purpose. Time was, however, running out.

But what the party has come out with on the penultimate day of filing nomination papers is a list of candidates that can do little to boost the sagging morale of the electorate. The list is a crude attempt by faction leaders to accommodate their supporters whose only contribution to the party is their unflinching loyalty to their respective masters.

The Congress, which has to carry the burden of five years of misrule in the state, cannot be expected to cash in on the Bharatiya Janata Party's internal problems because of its own intra-partysquabbles as reflected in the selection of candidates. Sonia Gandhi, it seems, has lost the opportunity of projecting herself as an able party president capable of taking harsh decisions in the interest of the party.

Akalis not in fray

The Akali Dal on Thursday decided not to contest the November 25 Assembly elections in Delhi and Rajasthan but to support the BJP ``with dedication'' to defeat the Congress. Chief whip of the party in Parliament Prem Singh Chandumajara said the Congress was ``enemy number one. It has opened our old wounds by giving patronage to killers of Sikhs in 1984 riots. Sikhs cannot forget it.''