New Delhi: The BJP on Friday announced its first list of 57 candidates for the Delhi assembly elections, scheduled to be held on February 8. While 11 of the candidates belong to the Scheduled Caste community, four are women.
The names were announced by BJP leader Manoj Tiwari at a press conference in the national capital. Among the prominent names in the list are Vijender Gupta, fielded by the party from Rohini; former AAP MLA Kapil Mishra from Model Town; Shikha Rai from Greater Kailash; Neelkamal Khatri from Narela; Surendra Singh Bittu from Timarpur; Vikram Bidhuri from Tughlakabad; Suman Kumar Gupta from Chandni Chowk; Ashish Sood from Janakpuri; and Ravi Negi from Patparganj.
Ravi Negi will face Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in Patparganj. However, the BJP is yet to name its candidate against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi constituency.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party had named candidates for all 70 seats in the national capital on Wednesday. The document released by the party’s political affairs committee 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.
Sources in the Congress, which drew a notch in the 2015 assembly elections, have indicated that it will release its list of candidates only after the other two parties have declared their picks.
AAP had made a clean sweep of the previous polls, bagging 67 seats to leave the BJP with just three. However, the main opposition party hopes to put up a winning figure when the votes for the upcoming polls are counted on February 11.
Manoj Tiwari, who was joined by senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar at the press conference, said the names were finalised at the party’s central election committee meeting on Thursday night.
