The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the initial list of 29 candidates for the February Delhi Assembly elections public on Saturday. AAP chief and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will face former West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma from the New Delhi constituency, one of the names on the first list. Former AAP Minister Kailash Gahlot has been fielded from Bijwasan rather than his home state of Najafgarh. In contrast, former South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri is scheduled to face CM Atishi from Kalkaji.
Arvinder Singh Lovely, a former Delhi Congress president, has been handed a ticket by the party, which has also dismissed Gandhi Nagar MLA Anil Bajpayee. The first list of BJP candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections in 2025 was initially expected to be released in late December following Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to chair a Central Election Committee meeting. The “lack of options” for some seats was cited by BJP sources as one of the reasons for the postponement of the candidate announcement.
Furthermore, it was thought that a change of leadership would occur in the state unit before the national leadership made a final decision on the polls, with a functioning president from an SC, ST, or OBC community. Following the commotion surrounding Dr. BR Ambedkar during the just-concluded Winter Session of the Parliament, there were rumors that the Delhi unit of the BJP may be turned over to “a senior leader from a significant community.”
In the meantime, the AAP has selected candidates for each of Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats. Candidates for 21 seats have been nominated by the Congress, and more are anticipated shortly.
The identities of the candidates running for 29 of the 70 seats in the nation’s capital have been made public by the BJP. Former Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal will face off against former BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma for the New Delhi seat. Once a close assistant to Arvind Kejriwal, former Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot defected from the AAP to the BJP months before the elections and is running for the Bijwasan seat.
Chief Minister Atishi’s opponent in the Kalkaji seat will be Ramesh Bidhuri, a BJP MP from South Delhi until 2024. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP did not provide Mr. Bidhuri with a ticket. Alka Lamba is the candidate put forth by the Congress from the Kalkaji constituency. After serving as a minister in Sheila Dikshit’s cabinet from 2003 to 2013, Arvinder Singh Lovely joined the BJP last year after leaving the Congress. He will now run from the east Delhi seat of Gandhi Nagar.
After winning a landslide majority twice in the Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party has held power since 2015. But the BJP won all seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, and the AAP hasn’t won a single one since 2014.
Virendra Sachdeva, the leader of the Delhi BJP, will not run in the next Assembly elections, sources told NDTV yesterday. This occurred in the midst of speculation that he could run for office.
The BJP and AAP are expected to engage in a bitterly contested struggle in the next elections. In the last two Delhi elections, the Congress, which has ruled the city for 15 years in a row, has failed to secure any seats. In the Delhi elections, the Congress and AAP, allies in the opposition group INDIA, are battling one another. In last year’s Haryana elections, the parties even engaged in separate campaigns.
