With the Delhi Assembly election scheduled on February 8 approaching close, the BJP on Friday has announced the first list of 57 candidates for the polls. The list was released by party’s Delhi president Manoj Tiwari along with Union Minister Prakash Javadekar and BJP leader Shyam Jaju.
Out of these, four are women candidates while 11 are from Scheduled Caste community.
Vijender Gupta, fielded from Rohini; Kapil Mishra from Model Town; Neelkamal Khatri from Narela; Shikha Rai from Greater Kailash; Surendra Singh Bittu from Teemarpur; Vikram Biduri from Tughlakabad; Suman Kumar Gupta from Chandni Chowk; Ashish Sood from Janakpuri and Ravi Negi from Patparganj are some of the prominent faces announced in the first list of candidates by the BJP.
Earlier, speculations were made that Kapil Mishra, who was earlier an AAP MLA, would be fielded against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Ravi Negi who is fielded from Patparganj would contest against Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.
The ruling AAP has already released the list of 70 candidates who will contest in the Delhi Assembly election.
Apart from AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal who will contest from New Delhi constituency, and his Deputy Manish Sisodia from Patparganj, the party has named Satyendra Jain from Shakur Basti, Jitendra Tomar from Tri Nagar, Jarnail Singh from Tilak Nagar, Atishi from Kalkaji and SK Bagga from Krishna Nagar constituencies among others.
Delhi will be witnessing a tripartite contest between the ruling AAP, Congress, and BJP. The list of candidates is not released by the Congress yet.
However, a news broke amid all these about 2012 gang-rape victim’s mother, Asha Devi, to be fielded by Congress against the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. She rejected the claim by saying, “I have no interest in politics and I have not spoken to anyone in Congress. I only want justice for my daughter and the execution of the convicts.”
In the last Assembly election which held in 2015, AAP bagged 67 out of 70 seats leaving BJP on three. Congress which was ruling in Delhi for the last three consecutive terms did not manage to get a single seat.