Resentment against the North West Delhi candidate Udit Raj and North East candidate Kanhaiya Kumar of Congress came out in open on Monday as a number of party’s former MLAs and Councillors protested outside the Delhi Congress office amid a Press conference where all three Lok Sabha contestants for Delhi were present.

Congress workers raised slogans of ‘Baahari ummeedwaar nahi chalega’ (external candidate will not work) while demonstrating their anger through a protest outside Delhi Congress office, against the party’s candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections 2024 in the national Capital. The ruckus came couple of days after AICC incharge Deepak Babaria and former East Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit had convened a separate meeting to discuss about candidatures before the party announced.

The press conference was cut short with loud slogans hurled outside office while Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely said that it is the only party that allows dissent in the open. It is being said that these were supporters of the former Delhi Minister Rajkumar Chauhan, who was also in the race for the reserved seat of North West Delhi.

In response, Raj alleged the protesters were “not of sound mind” and should be expelled from the party. “They are not of sound mind. I was an MP from 2014 to 2019 and now I have become an outsider. They have destroyed the party and should be expelled,” Mr Raj said and added that he will win by a huge margin.

JP Agarwal, who is a veteran leader and has won from the Chandni Chowk constituency thrice in 1984, 1989, and 1996, said that he has a relationship with every voter of the constituency. Attacking the BJP, he said that the MP of the saffron party has never made it a habit to regularly visit the constituencies. “There are many problems that people face there, however nothing has been resolved. I will work towards them all.”

Udit Raj, who has been an MP of North West Delhi, is being called an ‘outsider’ by Congress workers because he won the 2014 elections as a BJP candidate. However, he says that although he was an MP, where he worked towards some issues, many things couldn’t be completed because his proposals were never passed by the BJP.

“Even when I was no longer an MP, I was active in the constituency,” he said, adding that he will work for the vision of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge.

Former JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar, who contested unsuccessfully from Bihar’s Begusarai against Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Communist Party of India (CPI) ticket, joined the grand old party in 2021. Kumar said that the INDIA alliance is fighting all 543 seats together to fight against the BJP regime.”Inequality in the country is rising, poverty is rising. The work of the UPA government has been halted. We have a positive agenda for all the seats in which we are thinking about all sections of the society,” he added.

Attacking the two time MP Manoj Tiwari, he said that Tiwari talks about everything except what he has done for the constituency in the last 10 years as MP. Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments on Congress appeasing the Muslims, Kumar quipped that he is happy to hear the question and said that the Press can’t ask the same from the PM since he doesn’t hold any press conference.

Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats will go to the polls in the sixth phase on May 25. The BJP won all the seven seats in the 2014 and the 2019 elections. Barring two time MP Manoj Tiwari, all the faces are new. The saffron party has fielded Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi, Manoj Tiwari from East Delhi, Praveen Khandelwal from Chandni Chowk, Kamaljeet Sehrawat from West Delhi, Ramvir Bidhuri from South Delhi, Yogendra Chandolia from North West Delhi and harsh Malhotra from North East Delhi seat.

AAP and the Congress -- both constituents of the opposition INDIA bloc -- are contesting the general elections in an alliance in the national capital this time. The Congress has fielded candidates in the North East Delhi, North West Delhi and the Chandni Chowk seats while AAP is contesting from East Delhi, West Delhi, South Delhi and New Delhi.