In Shalimar Bagh, three of the four rebel candidates -- Tilak Raj Kataria, Brij Mohan Wig and J.P. Kapur -- have indeed withdrawn their nominations. The rebels claimed that they had withdrawn in favour of the fourth candidate Kishen Kumar Aggarwal. But there has been no understanding with the party on this issue, they said.

They also claimed that their deal with the parent party had fallen through. BJP leaders had reportedly refused to accept their demand that the party symbol be withdrawn from the official candidate in exchange for their withdrawal from the contest. This would have made the going difficult for the official candidate Rabindra Bansal.

The chairman of the campaign committee, Vijay Malhotra, insisted that the candidates were persuaded to withdraw in support of official candidates following meetings with party leaders. Malhotra began his list with three withdrawals from Shalimar Bagh claiming that Kataria, Wig and Kapoor are back in the party fold.

He also reeled off names of other BJP rebels who had filed their nomination papers for the November 25 polls in the Capital and had withdrawn from the contest.

Other withdrawals are: Ramesh Paharia from Ambedkar Nagar, Rampal Karana from Karawal Nagar, Jai Kishen Das Gupta from Seelampur and Dharam Pal from Geeta Colony. ``The rest of the rebel candidates who were yet to withdraw would be persuaded to retire in favour of official candidates if time did not permit,'' Malhotra said. But he could not give the exact number of the candidates likely to withdraw, saying a clear picture would emerge only by tomorrow.

The BJP leader also warned the rebels that it was in the BJP constitution that if a candidate contested against the official candidates, he/she could be expelled from the party for six years. ``We are making a last ditch effort to make sure that they retire in favour of the official candidates,'' he added.

But two of the three sitting MLAs who had filed nominations, Inder Raj Singh and Jagdish Batra, are not opting out of the contest. Neither are Shanker Dutt Pandey (Saket), Nirmal Mishra (Tughlakabad), Ravindra Naggar (Badarpur), Panna Lal Sagar (Rohtas Nagar) and Sarita Gupta (Mandawali).