Former Delhi Minister Raaj Kumar Anand, who quit from both the Delhi Cabinet and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) a month ago, filed his nomination for the New Delhi seat on Monday after he officially joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Sunday. Party workers were seen fluttering BSP flags to support his candidature from the BSP party in the national capital.

On the day of his nomination filing, AAP leader Somnath Bharti, who has been fielded as a joint AAP and INDIA alliance candidate from the New Delhi seat, said that his former party colleague Raaj Kumar Anand joined BSP due to fears of ED. “Today I learned an interesting thing, if you want to escape ED, then your first choice is BJP and now the second choice is BSP. Kanshi Ram’s party, BSP, which had set out to uplift Dalits is now working as the B-team of BJP,” he said.

Last month, the Patel Nagar MLA resigned from the Delhi cabinet, after he claimed that there is inadequate representation of Dalits within the party and the Kejriwal government is ‘anti-dalit’. "The public is being misled, they should understand this and support our BSP party," said the BSP candidate replying to Bharti’s claim. Further, he added that he doesn’t understand the reason for Bharti being so serious about him leaving the AAP.

After joining the BSP, Anand said, “I offer tributes to Baba Saheb Ambedkar. I feel that I have come back to my party.” Monday was the last day for filing nominations for the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 25. BJP’s Bansuri Swaraj and AAP’s Somnath Bharti have already submitted their nominations from the constituency.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had conducted searches at locations linked to him in November last year in relation to a suspected money laundering case related to alleged evasion of Customs duty and hawala payments to China.