In the heart of the national capital, the New Delhi Assembly seat is living up to its high-profile tag with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief and former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal set to lock horns with the sons of two former CMs: Sandeep Dikshit, the son of Congress’s Sheila Dikshit, and Parvesh Verma, the son of Sahib Singh Verma.
On Sunday, the AAP named Kejriwal on its final list of candidates for the elections. While the Congress has named Dikshit as its candidate from the constituency, the BJP list is not out yet but Verma is understood to have received the green light from the party leadership for his candidature.
The New Delhi constituency is a seat of power in more ways than one as it encompasses Parliament and the seat of the Central government, along with foreign missions and international institutions, and has sent several CMs to the Assembly. While the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency is one of the oldest and has existed since 1951, the Assembly seat was carved out during the 2008 delimitation.
Sources in the AAP said the party would soon kick off a constituency-specific campaign — its theme in the New Delhi seat being “Do CM ke bete aur ek Dilli ka beta (Sons of two CMs versus Delhi’s son)” — with Kejriwal himself soon set to hit the ground across the 70 Assembly seats.
Sources said Kejriwal had ensured a connection with his electorate by keeping the weekends “reserved for his constituency”. “During the week, he is the former Delhi CM and AAP convenor. But with regard to New Delhi, he becomes an MLA who has a strong relationship with the electorate. He hears them out during the weekend while on weekdays his family and MLA representative fill the vacuum,” said an AAP insider.
The source said Kejriwal attends events such as birthdays, weddings, and local sports tournaments in the constituency whenever possible. “Since he was first elected in 2013, he keeps saying, ‘inhone hi mujhe jitaya hai (these people made me win),’” the source said, adding that Kejriwal’s local campaign would soon pick up pace.
Since 2013, Kejriwal has maintained a strong hold on the seat. In his debut, he garnered 54% of the votes to defeat Sheila Dikshit while two years later he defeated the Congress’s Kiran Walia and the BJP’s Nupur Sharma by pocketing 64% of the votes. In 2020, his vote share marginally fell to 61%.
The New Delhi Assembly seat also includes parts of the erstwhile South Delhi Lok Sabha seat, from where BJP’s Sushma Swaraj was first elected in 1996. Two years later, she went on to become Delhi’s first woman CM for a 50-day period before losing to Dikshit, who held the seat from 1998 to 2013, when she lost to Kejriwal.
Notwithstanding the “Kejriwal factor”, sources in the BJP and Congress claim seeing Sandeep and Parvesh as “mere MLA candidates would be a mistake” though they emphasise that decisions on their prospective larger roles would only be taken after the election results.
A senior Congress leader said Sandeep Dikshit was the party’s CM face. “After having served two consecutive terms in the Lok Sabha and given his legacy as Mrs Dikshit’s son, it will be wrong to assume that he is contesting just to become an MLA. He is in the fray to become CM,” the leader said even as sources reiterated that “such decisions were the prerogative of the top brass”.
The road to the CM’s post may be a tedious one for Sandeep who has been in political oblivion since the AAP’s first victory in 2013. He has consistently targeted the AAP dispensation, especially on the probable negative implications of the now-defunct Feedback Unit (FBU), a body that was functional for a few months after the AAP’s 2015 victory, but was among the top leaders to participate in the INDIA bloc rally at Ramlila Maidan in April. He also visited Kejriwal’s residence after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested the former CM in the alleged excise scam case.
Parvesh Varma, on the other hand, was denied a Lok Sabha ticket by the BJP but is understood to have received “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s blessings” for his battle against Kejriwal and Sandeep Dikshit. The BJP has not yet released its list of candidates for the elections.
“Earlier this month, the PM himself reportedly spoke to Parvesh over the phone and asked him to prepare to oust Kejriwal. On Saturday, he told the media that he has been asked to prepare to contest from New Delhi even though the party is yet to officially announce its candidates,” said a source in the BJP.
The source claimed that since getting the call Parvesh was not only visiting the constituency but had also launched a full-fledged campaign. “Modi and (Union Home Minister) Amit Shah see him as a potential face of the campaign but his probable bigger role will get clear only in the days to come,” said the BJP leader.
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