The Aam Aadmi Party Thursday released its first list of 11 candidates for the Delhi Assembly polls scheduled in February 2025, bringing in six leaders who were recently inducted into the AAP from the BJP and Congress.
The names were finalised during the AAP’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) meeting chaired by the party’s chief Arvind Kejriwal. AAP leader Gopal Rai said, “Most of most of these 11 seats are those where the AAP is not in power and the BJP has MLAs in these constituencies at present such as Ghonda, Karawal Nagar, and Rohtas Nagar”.
In the Kirari Assembly constituency, the AAP has dropped sitting MLA Ritu Raj and picked Anil Jha, a former BJP MLA and leader who was inducted into the party by Kejriwal on Sunday.
The party said Brahm Singh Tanwar, who was also inducted from the Bharatiya Janata Party after Chattarpur MLA Kartar Singh Tanwar joined the BJP, will contest from that Assembly constituency. B B Tyagi will contest from the Laxmi Nagar constituency. Tyagi, a former two-time councillor from Laxmi Nagar, joined the AAP in the first week of November in the presence of former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.
Somesh Shokeen, the former Congress MLA from the Matiala Assembly constituency, who also recently joined the AAP in the presence of Kejriwal, was given a ticket from the seat. Shokeen is the face of the Jat community and Delhi Rural.
The Kejriwal-led party has given a ticket to former senior Congress MLA Mateen Ahmad’s son Zubair Chaudhary, who joined the AAP in October. Chaudhary will contest from North East Delhi’s Seelampur constituency.
Another former Congress leader and MLA Vir Singh Dhingan, who joined the AAP last week, will contest from Seemapuri. Dhingan was inducted into the AAP after former social welfare minister and Seemapuri MLA Rajendra Pal Gautam, who was also the party’s Dalit face, joined the Congress party in September.
The AAP has also brought in old hands and some new faces to contest the Delhi Assembly elections 2025.
For example, the party has repeated Deepak Singla from Vishwas Nagar. Singla contested from the same seat in the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections against the BJP’s O P Sharma but lost by a margin of 6,000 votes. He is currently the AAP co-incharge of MCD and in charge of Maharashtra and Goa.
The party has given a ticket to Sarita Singh to once again contest from Rohtas Nagar constituency. Singh was elected from the same seat in the 2014 Assembly polls and contested again in the 2020 Assembly elections but was defeated by BJP MLA Jitender Mahajan. She is currently a member of AAP Mahila Shakti.
The party has also introduced a new face — Ram Singh Netaji — who will contest from Badarpur. Netaji joined the AAP in 2020, and before that, he was with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and also a two-time Independent MLA.
The party has given a ticket to Gaurav Sharma from Ghonda. In the last Assembly polls, the AAP’s Shri Dutt Sharma contested against BJP leader Ajay Mahawar from Ghonda and lost by about 27,000 votes. Manoj Tyagi has been named as the AAP candidate from Karawal Nagar. Rajinder Nagar MLA Durgesh Pathak contested from this constituency in the last Assembly polls, but was defeated by BJP leader Mohan Singh Bisht.
After the AAP released its list of candidates, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor took a jibe at the ruling party pointing to the absence of its senior leaders. “When a party has to declare 6 out of its first 11 election candidates as outsiders and the party president himself or any senior leader or minister does not get a ticket, then understand that the leadership of that party has understood anti-incumbency… Arvind Kejriwal should understand that now his departure from Delhi is certain and will happen soon,” said Kapoor.
In the Delhi Assembly election 2020, the AAP registered a landslide victory by winning 62 of the 70 seats, and the BJP managed to get 8 seats.
