The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday released the second list of 20 candidates for the upcoming Delhi assembly elections but dropped a bombshell as 14 sitting Delhi MLAs, replaced them with fresh faces, and shifted two others including Manish Sisodia and Rakhi Bidlanm to other seats.
Facing the threat of anti-incumbency, disruption caused by the arrest of senior leaders and an opposition hoping to cash in on corruption allegations, the Aam Aadmi Party is reworking its line-up for the next Delhi Assembly polls, which could result in several MLAs being discarded and some others being fielded from different constituencies.
Former Deputy Chief Minister and Patparganj MLA Manish Sisodia was shifted to Jangpura while popular UPSC coaching teacher and motivational speaker Avadh Ojha, who joined the AAP last week, was fielded from Patparganj.
Sisodia won from Patparganj in 2013, 2015 and 2020, with the win in the middle being the biggest with a margin of over 28,000 votes. In 2020, he won by just over 3,100 votes. On November 21, AAP came out with a first list of 11 candidates for Delhi, including for six seats it lost to the BJP in 2020. It announced new candidates in three seats.
The party said the changes were necessitated by survey results. There has been more churn since. Over the past two days, Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel and Timarpur MLA Dilip Pandey, who has been associated with the party since the India Against Corruption movement, announced they will not contest this time. Gulab Singh, who was the party’s Gujarat election campaign in-charge, will also not contest.
And the party said the process of finalising the candidates for the 2025 assembly polls in Delhi is still underway. It should be noted that in the 2020 assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party dropped 15 incumbent MLAs from its list of 70 candidates while 24 new faces were fielded. These included now-Chief Minister Atishi, the party’s present Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha, and also Dilip Pandey.