Amidst dissidence in the party over selection of candidates for lok Sabha polls in Delhi, over 60 AAP workers on Thursday protested outside the party office against the decision to field JNU professor Anand Kumar from North- East Delhi seat terming him as an “outsider”.
The party workers who protested claimed Anand Kumar does not belong to the constituency and that the party should have given ticket either to party leaders Gopal Rai or Shazia Ilmi.
“Prof Anand Kumar is an outsider and is an unknown face. Arvind Kejriwal should have given the ticket to a known face or at least to those who had filled the forms seeking candidacy from North East. Kumar had applied for a seat from South Delhi and not from North east Delhi,” said Mumtaz Ali, an AAP worker from Gokalpuri.
He added the party had not given ticket to any Muslim face in Delhi and should have considered Ilmi for North East Delhi seat. “Shazia (Ilmi) is a known name. She would have swept the polls and bagged all the Muslim votes in the area. It has pockets like Seelampur, Mustafabad, Gonda, Burari and Timapur which has sizable Muslim votes,” Ali said, adding party workers would have been happy even if it had nominated Gopal Rai, a senior AAP leader.
“It is we who have to go an campaign for him. People will ask us who Prof Kumar is and we will not be able to answer their questions,” said Asif Mohammad, another AAP worker from Golakpuri.