With a couple of months left for the Delhi Assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) released its fourth, and final, list of 38 candidates on Sunday. AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal will contest from New Delhi constituency for the fourth consecutive time, while Delhi Chief Minister Atishi has been fielded from Kalkaji for the second time. In the fourth list, a total of 38 candidates have been announced, of which 36 are sitting MLAs.
The AAP has now released names of its candidates for all 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly. The party has, so far, dropped 19 sitting MLAs. The party has given a chance to two new names- Ramesh Pehalwan from Kasturba Nagar and Naresh Balyan’s wife Pooja Balyan. The upcoming polls are expected to be a litmus test for the party’s governance model and its appeal to the electorate.
Besides Kejriwal’s bid for New Delhi, where he has won since 2013 the AAP faces significant competition. The Congress has fielded former Member of Parliament Sandeep Dikshit, son of Sheila Dikshit, the city’s longest-serving chief minister while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to field former MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, son of former Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma who was denied a ticket for the Lok Sabha polls.
The New Delhi constituency is a seat of power in more ways than one as it encompasses Parliament and the seat of the Central government, along with foreign missions and international institutions, and has sent several CMs to the Assembly. While the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency is one of the oldest and has existed since 1951, the Assembly seat was carved out during the 2008 delimitation.
Key ministers in the Delhi Government have also been fielded in prominent constituencies, including Saurabh Bharadwaj from Greater Kailash, Gopal Rai from Babarpur, and Imran Hussain from Ballimaran.
Another key name on AAP’s fourth list is senior party leader and former minister Satyendra Jain. Jain, arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case in 2022, and granted bail in October, has been repeated from the Shakur Basti seat he currently holds. This points to the party’s rock-solid support for him. In West Delhi’s Uttam Nagar constituency, AAP has fielded Pooja Balyan, wife of sitting MLA Naresh Balyan.
This comes a month after Balyan’s remark, in which he promised to make roads as “smooth as Hema Malini’s cheeks” sparked a row and earned him a rap from the National Commission for Women. Balyan was arrested earlier this month for allegedly having links with gangster Kapil Sangwan. The party has also given the Mehrauli ticket to Naresh Yadav again. Yadav has recently been sentenced in the Quran Desecration case by a Punjab Court.
Shortly after the AAP released its final list of candidates, Kejriwal took a potshot at the BJP alleging that the saffron party has no chief minister face. “Today the Aam Aadmi Party announced its candidates on all 70 seats. The party is contesting the elections with full confidence and full preparation,” he said in his post on X.
He attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party and said, “BJP is missing. They have no CM face, no team, no planning and no vision for Delhi. They have only one slogan, only one policy and only one mission, ‘Remove Kejriwal’. Ask them what they did in five years, and they reply, ‘Kejriwal ko khub gaali di’. Our party has a vision and a plan for the development of Delhiites and a good team of educated people to implement it. There is a long list of works done in the last ten years. People of Delhi will vote for those who work, not those who abuse.”
Meanwhile, BJP leader Ramesh Pehalwan, along with his wife and two-time councillor Kusum Lata, joined the AAP on Sunday, and was given ticket from the Kasturba Nagar seat, replacing three-time MLA Madan Lal. The couple joined the party in the presence of Arvind Kejriwal. In the fourth list, Somnath Bharti has got the ticket from Malviya Nagar, Amanatullah Khan from Okhla, Dhanwati Chandela from Rajouri Garden, Vishesh Ravi from Karol Bagh, Pramila Tokas from RK Puram, Shoaib Iqbal from Matia Mahal and Naresh Yadav from Mehrauli.
The AAP had announced 11 candidates in the first list, 20 candidates in the second list and one candidate in the third list. In the 2020 election, the AAP had secured 62 of the 70 seats in Delhi, solidifying its dominance in the Capital’s politics.
