New Delhi: Former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia will contest the upcoming Delhi assembly elections from the Jangpura constituency, as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded UPSC coaching teacher Avadh Ojha from his old seat Patparganj, which he has held since the party’s inception in 2013.
AAP released its second list of 20 candidates for the Delhi polls Monday.
Sisodia is among the prominent AAP faces who have been shuffled—while some have been dropped altogether—as the party asserted that “hard work” and “performance” would be the only parameters to make it to the line-up of the February 2025 polls.
AAP sources, however, pointed out that Sisodia, the de facto number two in the party, was given a new seat as the party’s internal survey threw up “concerning findings”. Sisodia had a narrow victory from Patparganj in 2020, finishing ahead of his BJP rival by only 3,207 votes.
In fact, six out of the eight seats the BJP won in the 2020 Delhi assembly polls were in east Delhi, Northeast Delhi and Shahdara districts, which fall in the trans-Yamuna region that lags behind in socio-economic factors compared to other parts of the national capital.
From February 2023 to August 2024, Sisodia spent 17 months in jail after being arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with alleged irregularities in drafting and implementing a new excise policy for Delhi. The Supreme Court granted him bail in August.
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‘Handing over to another teacher’
After the list was announced Monday, Sisodia took to X to suggest that he had moved away from Patparganj to accommodate Ojha.
“I consider myself a teacher, not a politician. Patparganj was not just an assembly constituency for me, but the heart of the education revolution in Delhi. When Avadh Ojha joined the party and there was a demand to field him in the elections, all I could think was that there could be no better seat than Patparganj for a teacher. I am happy to hand over the responsibility of Patparganj to another teacher. Now I am ready to work with everyone in Jangpura to do the same work that I did in Patparganj for education, service and development,” he wrote.
@ArvindKejriwal जी और @AamAadmiParty का तहे दिल से आभार, जिन्होंने मुझ पर विश्वास जताते हुए जंगपुरा से चुनाव लड़ने की जिम्मेदारी दी।
मैं खुद को एक शिक्षक मानता हूँ, राजनीतिज्ञ नहीं। पटपड़गंज मेरे लिए सिर्फ एक विधानसभा क्षेत्र नहीं, बल्कि दिल्ली में शिक्षा क्रांति का दिल था। जब… https://t.co/tYvAPiEomy
— Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) December 9, 2024
The BJP, however, has been predicting that Patparganj would go to Ojha as soon as he joined the party almost a week ago.
After his candidacy was confirmed Monday, BJP’s social media head Amit Malviya said the capital’s ruling party was grappling with “anti-incumbency jitters”.
“In the two candidate lists released so far, featuring 31 names, the party has either dropped or swapped 83% of its sitting MLAs. The first list included six turncoats—three from the BJP and three from the Congress—while the second list adds three more, all from the BJP! But Delhi is firm that it will not tolerate anymore,” he said.
Meanwhile, AAP sources said it was a calculated move to field Ojha from Patparganj as the constituency in east Delhi is home to a large population of migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, as well as coaching centres. Ojha is from Gonda in UP.
Also Read: Denied LS ticket by BJP & Congress, UPSC educator Avadh Ojha who praised Yogi, Rahul joins AAP
AAP removed all sitting MLAs
The AAP, which has so far announced 31 names for elections to the 70-member Delhi assembly, has replaced all sitting MLAs. Only two incumbent legislators—Sisodia and Rakhi Birla—have been relocated to new seats, while the others have likely faced the axe.
Birla has been shifted to Madipur from the Mangolpuri constituency which she has represented since 2013.
Among those denied tickets are Dilip Pandey, Ram Niwas Goel, Rituraj Jha, Gulab Singh Yadav, as the party has fielded six imports from the BJP and three from the Congress instead.
In past elections too, the AAP replaced several sitting MLAs. In 2020, it had fielded new faces in around 26 of the 70 seats, but only nine of them were defectors from either the BJP or the Congress.
Meanwhile, many AAP supporters were unhappy that Dilip Pandey—a politician with past links to the Congress and the BJP—did not get a ticket.
But Pandey doused the flames with a post on X Monday, saying that he was not going anywhere. He wrote: “Yesterday, I saw that suddenly a campaign has started in which directly or indirectly an attempt is being made to suggest that I am full of dissatisfaction and anger towards the party or my leader Arvind ji. At first, I found it amusing and felt like ignoring it. But many assumptions can be made about my silence, so I have to write this with great regret.”
Before becoming an MLA from Timarpur in 2020, Pandey had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from AAP. He has also been the party’s Delhi convenor from 2014 to 2017.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
