Ending speculation over South and West lok Sabha seats, the Congress High Command on Thursday late evening renominated sitting MP Ramesh Kumar and Mahabal Mishra respectively. Congress had on Tuesday renominated five sitting MPs — Kapil Sibal, Sandeep Dikshit, JP Agarwal, Krishna Tirath and Ajay Maken — for the lok Sabha polls in the national Capital while deferring its decision on the remaining two seats. With Thursday’s announcement, battle lines have been drawn in all seven seats of Delhi where polling will be held on April 10.
Kumar who is brother of Jat leader Sajjan Kumar, would contest against BJP candidate Ramesh Bidhuri and AAP candidate Col Devender Sehrawat from South Delhi seat while Mahabal Mishra would contest against BJP candidate Pravesh Verma and AAP candidate Jarnail Singh from West Delhi seat. Kumar had defeated Bidhuri by a huge margin. Kumar had got 32,85,089 votes while BJP candidate Bidhuri had obtained 20,26,674 votes in 2009. Similarly, Mishra had defeated BJP candidate Jagdish Mukhi in 2009. Mishra had got 4,79,856 votes while Mukhi got 3,50,823 votes.
Political circles were agog that Congress High Command was actively mulling over brining new faces for these two lok Sabha seats where party has failed to win a single Assembly seats during the Assembly elections in December last year. There were two factors that working against Kumar and Mishra, first defeat of Jag Pravesh, son of Sajjan Kumar from Sangam Vihar Assembly seat and the second is defeat of Vinay Mishra from Palam Assembly seat in the Assembly polls. However, both Mishra and Kumar have managed to retain the seats as Congress leadership would have been forced to explain the voters that why they changed the candidates. Insiders say that the party was in consultation with Bollywood actor Manoj Bajpayee and Shekhar Suman for West Delhi seat but both of them have refused. Similarly, the party was keen to give ticket to cricketer Virender Sehwag from South Delhi seat but Sehwag has refused to contest.
On the other hand, Jat leader Sajjan Kumar was adamant that ticket should be given to his male member of his family. Sajjan Kumar is a known Jat leader who will pay a major role in several Jat dominated constituency. Similarly, Mishra is a known Congress face of Poorvanchali in Delhi and candidature of Mishra will help the party to woo Poorvanchali voters across the city. There are 25 lakh-30 lakh Poorvanchalis voters in Delhi. They voted to the Congress party in 2009.