The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), here on Wednesday, made public the list of 39 star campaigners for the February 8 Delhi Assembly polls with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s name on the top.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Punjab state head Bhagwant Mann, Delhi state convenor Gopal Rai, Rajya Sabha members Sanjay Singh, Sushil Gupta and N.D. Gupta also figure in the list, which was submitted to the Delhi Chief Election Officer on Monday.
Cabinet Ministers Satyendra Jain, Imran Hussain, Rajendra Pal Gautam and Kailash Gahlot will also campaign across the city.
Sitting MLAs Saurabh Bhardwaj, Rakhi Birla, Jarnail Singh, Somnath Bharti, Sanjeev Jha and Amantullah Khan; election candidates like Durgesh Pathak (from Karawal Nagar), Shoaib Iqbal (Matia Mahal), Atishi (Kalkaji), Raghav Chadha (Rajinder Nagar) and Dilip Pandey (Timarpur) are also in the list.
Music composer Vishal Dadlani, Pankaj Gupta, Prithvi Reddy, and national spokespersons Preeti Menon and Ajoy Kumar, along with a number of MLAs from Punjab, like Aman Arora, Harpal Singh Cheema and Rupinder Kaur ‘Ruby’, and Gurmeet Singh Haher will also campaign for the AAP.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) last week announced the list of all 70 candidates for the February 8 Delhi Assembly elections, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal contesting again from New Delhi seat and his deputy Manish Sisodia again in the fray from Patparganj.
The party has dropped 15 of its sitting MLAs and added 24 new faces in total, including unsuccessful 2019 Lok Sabha candidates Atishi, Dilip Pandey and Raghav Chadha.
All the ministers, including Sisodia, are also re-contesting from their respective seats as well as Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goyal (Shahdara) and Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla (Mangol Puri).
Eight women candidates have been given the opportunity in the list released by the AAP’s Political Affairs Committee.
Besides replacing 15 sitting MLAs, the party has fielded new candidates on four Assembly constituencies held by BJP and five seats which fell vacant after the sitting MLAs were disqualified over defection.
In the 2015 polls, while the AAP bagged 67 of 70 seats, the BJP got the remaining three. The AAP lost from the Rajouri Garden seat in 2017 in a bypoll.
The AAP had also disqualified five of its MLAs since August 2019.