Days after the party announced a seat-sharing agreement with the Congress, which will contest the remaining three seats in the city and nine in Haryana, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday named four candidates for the Lok Sabha elections from the national Capital and one from Haryana. Three of the candidates are currently serving as legislators in Delhi.
Somnath Bharti, a Malviya Nagar MLA, will run for the New Delhi seat; Sahiram Pahalwan, a Tughlakabad lawmaker from South Delhi; Kuldeep Kumar, an East Delhi MLA from Kondli; and senior party leader Mahabal Mishra, an AAP representative from West Delhi will represent the party. Meanwhile, Sushil Gupta will run for office in Haryana from Kurukshetra.
According to people with knowledge of the situation, party leaders are expected to shortlist candidates for the three seats in a meeting later this week. The Congress will run for the seats in Chandni Chowk, North East Delhi, and North West Delhi.
The statement was released following chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's Tuesday chairing of the AAP's political affairs committee meeting, which is the highest decision-making body inside the party.
Following months of back-and-forth and open verbal sparring, the alliance between the two sides represented a major boost for the struggling Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now holds all seven seats in Delhi. In 2019, the AAP won two seats, North West Delhi and South Delhi, while the Congress finished second in five seats, East Delhi, West Delhi, New Delhi, North East Delhi, and Chandni Chowk. The AAP has not been able to secure a Lok Sabha seat in the Capital in the eleven years since its formation.
At a press conference, AAP leaders Atishi, Gopal Rai, and Sandeep Pathak revealed the list of candidates, praising them for being approachable and stating that they were picked for their "winnability."
In order to win these seats and fulfill our obligation as members of the INDIA alliance to defend the Constitution and democracy, we have carefully considered all relevant aspects, including many studies, before deciding to field these candidates, according to Rai.
Bharti is a well-liked and experienced leader of the party, having served as a Malviya Nagar MLA three times. Since March 2023, he has additionally held the position of vice-chairperson of the Delhi Jal Board, the water utility for the Capital.
Pahalwan is a two-term MLA from Tughlakabad and a former deputy mayor of the former South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC).
In 2020, Kumar was elected to the Kondli assembly constituency. Prior to that, he served as an East Delhi municipal corporation councillor from 2017 to 2020.
Mishra, on the other hand, is a well-liked politician from the Purvanchali community, a significant voting group in the Capital and a three-term Congress MP from West Delhi. Ahead of the MCD elections in November 2022, he became a member of the AAP. On a party ticket, his son Vinay Mishra was elected as an MLA from Dwarka.
Shortly after the announcement, in a video message, Kejriwal referred to Kumar's candidacy as a "revolutionary step."
According to him, awarding a ticket to Kuldeep Kumar, a member of a scheduled caste from East Delhi, a general seat, is a groundbreaking move. The AAP rejects caste division. Everyone is equal, according to the AAP, and those who are capable can be fielded from that.
Arvinder Singh Lovely, the head of the Delhi Congress, predicted that the INDIA alliance will win all seven seats in the capital.
The people are tired of the BJP MPs, who have been out of touch with them for the past five years, and they are generally disappointed with the PM Narendra Modi government because of a number of issues, including inflation, unemployment, the erosion of the nation's democratic values, and the trampling of democracy, Lovely predicted that the AAP-Congress alliance would win all seven seats.
In Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Goa, and Chandigarh, the AAP is running in coalition with the Congress in this summer's national elections.
According to Pathak, the party has suggested creating a committee to coordinate the Lok Sabha polls with the Congress.
Our suggestion is to establish a committee to coordinate with the Congress. He stated, "We hope it materializes soon." Virendra Sachdeva of the Delhi BJP referred to the AAP's declaration as "insignificant."
In Delhi, the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will win all seven Lok Sabha seats. He asserted that Kejriwal's dishonesty and the AAP's corruption ensured the party's downfall.
