NEW DELHI: The contest in East Delhi parliamentary seat took an interesting turn on Monday, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielding former India cricketer Gautam Gambhir from the seat. The BJP’s second list for Delhi, featuring his name, surprise many as his candidature was reportedly being considered from New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency.Scotching all speculations, the BJP handed a fresh ticket to sitting New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi. Gambhir has replaced sitting BJP MP Maheish Girri. Gambhir, a resident of Rajinder Nagar, will be locked in a three-way contest with Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) Atishi and Congress candidate Arvinder Singh Lovely.
Lekhi is pitted against AAP’s Brajesh Goel and Ajay Maken of the Congress. The party has, so far, announced its candidates for six of the seven seats in the national capital.Gambhir joined the party in March. Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad had welcomed him into the saffron fold.According to senior BJP leaders, Jaitley had been batting for Gambhir’s ticket.
“The election committee of Delhi BJP sent Gambhir’s name for New Delhi seat. However, at the last minute, changes were made and he was asked to contest East Delhi, so that Lekhi could be fielded from New Delhi,” a senior BJP leader said.Soon after the announcement, Girri congratulated Gambhi on Twitter. “I congratulate Gautam Gambhir, BJP’s candidate from east Delhi seat. I hope under his stewardship, we will again win east Delhi and help Narendra Modi return as prime minister,” his tweet in Hindi said.
The BJP had on Sunday handed fresh tickets to four sitting MPs from Delhi — Harsh Vardhan (Chandni Chowk), Manoj Tiwari (northeast Delhi), Parvesh Verma (west Delhi) and Ramesh Bidhuri (south Delhi). The BJP had won all seven seats in the national capital in the last election.Meanwhile, three BJP nominees, Harsh Vardhan, Manoj Tiwari, and Parvesh Verma, filed their nominations from Chandni Chowk, North East Delhi and West Delhi, respectively, on Monday.
They filed their papers after holding road shows that drew party cadres in their hundreds. While Verma was accompanied by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Vijay Goel, singer Sapna Choudhary and rebel AAP MLA Kapil Mishra tagged along with Manoj Tiwari.
Harsha Vardhan, flanked by Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said neither AAP nor the Congress has any programme or policy to match BJP’s performance.