With less than a week left before the announcement of Delhi assembly polls, the BJP has released its first list of 29 candidates, awarding tickets to four sitting MLAs, two former MPs, and eight former MLAs. The BJP’s first list features eight prominent leaders who switched over from the Congress and AAP in recent months.

Former West Delhi MP Parvesh  Sahib Singh Verma will contest against AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi assembly constituency. The New Delhi seat, held by Kejriwal since 2013, will witness the former chief minister taking on the sons of two other former chief ministers. Verma is the son of Sahib Singh Verma, who had a two-year tenure as chief minister in the 1990s. Former West Delhi MP Verma started his preparations for contesting from the seat even before he was announced as the official candidate, saying he had been given the go-ahead by national leaders. The Congress candidate from the seat is former three-term chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit.

“I thank my party’s top leadership... I hope that the trust that the party has shown in me, I’ll live up to it... When Delhi was facing COVID-19, when they needed Oxygen, Arvind Kejriwal Ji was distributing a ‘free bottle on every bottle’... There are many works in Delhi - like cleaning Yamuna, and curbing pollution... when the BJP forms the govt, we will do all these works,” Verma said after the BJP released its first list.

Former South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri will face chief minister Atishi in Kalkaji. Congress has fielded Alka Lamba from here, making it a triangular contest.

Four former Delhi ministers - Kailash Gahlot and Raaj Kumar Anand, who served in the outgoing AAP government, along with Arvinder Singh Lovely and Rajkumar Chauhan, who held key portfolios during Sheila Dikshit’s government from 2003 to 2013 - have also been given tickets.

Gahlot’s seat has been shifted from Najafgarh to Bijwasan, while Anand will contest from the reserved constituency of Patel Nagar.  The two-time Najafgarh MLA resigned as minister and quit AAP to join the BJP in November.

Tarvinder Singh Marwah, a three-time former Congress MLA from Jangpura who joined the BJP in 2022, will contest from the same seat. He is pitted against senior AAP leader and former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.

Former Delhi minister Arvind Singh Lovely has been fielded from the Gandhi Nagar seat in east Delhi, replacing incumbent BJP MLA Anil Bajpai. Bajpai had defeated Lovely from the seat in the 2020 polls.

Chauhan will run from the reserved Mangolpuri constituency. He was minister in the erstwhile Sheila Dikshit government. Raaj Kumar Anand, who resigned as a minister and quit AAP earlier this year, was fielded from the Patel Nagar seat.

Chhatarpur MLA Kartar Singh, who also switched to the saffron party from AAP, has been fielded from the same seat. ND Sharma, another former AAP MLA, will contest as a BJP candidate from Badarpur.

The BJP has fielded its national office-bearers Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Ashish Sood from the Karol Bagh and the Janakpuri seats, respectively. BJP national secretary Manjinder Singh Sirsa will contest from Rajouri Garden, which he had won in the 2015 elections. Former Congress councillor Kumari Rinku is the BJP’s candidate from Seemapuri.

The BJP also retained incumbent MLAs OP Sharma (Vishwas Nagar), Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Vijender Gupta (Rohini), Ajay Mahawar (Ghonda) and Jitendra Mahajan (Rohtash Nagar).

The party has not yet announced its candidates for the two other seats it won in the 2020 polls -- Laxmi Nagar and the Karawal Nagar. Former Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay will contest from Malviya Nagar.

The party has fielded former MLA Manoj Shokeen against Delhi minister Raghuvinder Shokeen from the Nangloi Jat seat.

The BJP’s city unit chief Virendra Sachdeva said in a statement that the party had fielded “strong” candidates who would act as “catalysts” for change. Elections to the 70-member Delhi Assembly are due next month.

After the list was released, Bidhuri expressed his confidence to defeat Atishi, saying ,” he  thank the BJP leadership for showing trust in me to reclaim the Kalkaji assembly seat. Delhi is suffering because of Arvind Kejriwal. The people of Kalkaji have also faced ‘aapda’ under CM Atishi...”

The BJP is pulling out all the stops to end AAP’s hold on power in the city since 2013, except for a brief period when Delhi was under President’s rule. The upcoming elections are being viewed as a fiercely contested battle between the BJP and AAP. The Congress, which was in power in Delhi for 15 straight years, has not been able to win any seat in the last two editions of the Delhi polls.