The bat­tle is on for the seat of Cunu­pia on the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. Can­di­dates Rasheed “Patos” Ali (PNM) and Richard Sukdeo (UNC) filed their nom­i­na­tion pa­pers on Mon­day at the of­fice of the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer at the South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia.

Ali was the first to file. He was es­cort­ed by a small en­tourage along with tas­sa mu­sic that made the walk from his cam­paign of­fices lo­cat­ed 100 me­tres north of the of­fice of the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer a par­ty-like at­mos­phere.

Af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly fil­ing, Ali said he plans to put the squeeze on the au­thor­i­ties to de­liv­er to the peo­ple.

Ali, a 70-year-old pop­u­lar busi­ness­man from the area, said Cunu­pia has suf­fered too long from a lack of in­fra­struc­ture, bad roads and over­grown lots. Ali said it was high time that the PNM be giv­en the chance to de­liv­er to the peo­ple of Cunu­pia. Ali said he was en­cour­aged by the peo­ple of Cunu­pia to get up and do some­thing. He said the com­mu­ni­ty was not all that well rep­re­sent­ed by the past MP and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Coun­cilor.

He said, “We will find funds, we will find a way to get things done.” Lennox Rat­tans­ingh, the cam­paign man­ag­er for Ali, said Ali has al­ready hit the ground run­ning with a rigid walk­a­bout cam­paign. Rat­tans­ingh said all pro­to­cols re­gard­ing Covid-19 would be fol­lowed.

Sukdeo showed up at the of­fice short­ly af­ter 10 am.

He was ac­com­pa­nied by a mu­sic truck and sup­port­ers.

Af­ter fil­ing Sukdeo came out flash­ing his re­ceipt show­ing the $2,000 paid to con­test the elec­tion.

Sukdeo, 65, a re­tired pub­lic ser­vant, said his chances of win­ning are ex­cel­lent. He said the UNC has rep­re­sent­ed the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas well at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el.

When asked if he may be ey­ing the avail­able post of Deputy Ch­agua­nas May­or, he said: “I can't speak to that, I am here just fil­ing these pa­pers as a coun­cil­lor.”

Sukdeo said he plans to cam­paign on­line and on the streets while ob­serv­ing all Covid-19 pro­to­cols. He said the elec­tion day ma­chin­ery was well oiled and he was ready to take the seat home for the UNC. The seat be­came va­cant when Van­dana Mo­hit, the pre­vi­ous coun­cil­lor gave up the post to con­test the seat Ch­agua­nas East seat in the last Gen­er­al Elec­tion, which she won.