NEW DELHI: A few days before the Delhi assembly elections are announced, and amidst a blitzkrieg it has unleashed on the ruling AAP, BJP finally released its much-awaited first list of candidates on Saturday.
It has 29 names, including four sitting legislators, two former MPs and eight former MLAs.
The most significant names in the first list are of former West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma, who has been pitted against AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi assembly constituency, and ex-South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, who will take on chief minister Atishi in Kalkaji. Congress has fielded Sandeep Dikshit, former East Delhi MP and son of late former CM Sheila Dikshit, from New Delhi and All India Mahila Congress chief Alka Lamba from Kalkaji. It will be a triangular contest on both seats and the outcome will be keenly awaited.
Four former Delhi ministers – Kailash Gahlot and Raaj Kumar Anand, who served in the outgoing AAP govt, and Arvinder Singh Lovely and Rajkumar Chauhan, who held key portfolios during Sheila Dikshit’s tenure as CM, from 2003 to 2013 – have also been given tickets. While Gahlot has been shifted from Najafgarh, which sent him to the assembly in 2015 and 2020, to Bijwasan this time, Lovely has replaced sitting BJP MLA Anil Kumar Bajpai in his former stronghold of Gandhi Nagar. Bajpai was elected on an AAP ticket in 2015 but later switched sides and won the 2020 poll as a BJP candidate.
Anand, who left AAP in April last year, joined BSP briefly and contested the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and then joined BJP, will contest from the reserved constituency of Patel Nagar, which he won in 2020. Chauhan has been fielded from the reserved Mangolpuri constituency. Another former Congress MLA, Tarwinder Singh Marwah, will contest from Jangpura – a seat he held during the Congress govt – against former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who has shifted from Patparganj.
This seat will also witness an interesting contest with former mayor Farhad Suri contesting as a Congress candidate.
The elections are due to be held in February. While AAP has already declared its candidates on all 70 seats, Congress has named 48.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said the 29 candidates announced by the party are strong and will act as a catalyst for change in the city. AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said the BJP’s first list of candidates included names of those who used abusive language in Parliament and those who were caught distributing cash in their constituencies.
