New Delhi: Former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia will contest the upcoming Delhi assembly elections from Jangpura instead of Patparganj, a seat which he has won three times, and which will now be contested by new entrant to the party, Avadh Ojha.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) released its second list of candidates, which included 20 names on Monday, December 9, which saw former UPSC coach Ojha being named in Sisodia’s traditional seat. Ojha only joined the party last week.
In a statement on X after the list was released, Sisodia said that he considered himself as a teacher and not a politician, and that there could be no better seat for Ojha.
“Patparganj was not just an assembly constituency for me, but the heart of the education revolution in Delhi. When Avadh Ojha ji 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,” he wrote.
“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 added.
Sisodia’s most resounding victory in Patparganj was in 2015 when he defeated his former party colleague Vinod Kumar Binny, who had switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by over 28,000 votes. In 2013, he had defeated the BJP’s Nakul Bharadwaj by 11,476 votes. But his winning margin came down to only 3,207 votes when he defeated the BJP’s Ravinder Singh Negi in 2020.
The Delhi assembly elections, due by February, will be Sisodia’s first since he walked out of jail on a bail in August. He was imprisoned for 17 months in connection with the Delhi excise policy cases registered by both the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
“For me, politics is not a means to power, but a means to education, honesty and public welfare. From Patparganj to Jangpura, my resolve is firm: to make Delhi even better,” Sisodia wrote on X.
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Following the release of the list, the BJP said that Sisodia’s seat being shuffled shows that the AAP is scared of anti-incumbency in the upcoming elections.
“The former deputy chief minister of the state leaving his seat and running away clearly shows the fear and panic of the Aam Aadmi Party,” stated Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva.
“The people of Delhi are fed up with the Kejriwal government, and it is certain that Kejriwal and Atishi Marlena will also leave their seats and run away. This party, born out of corruption, will end on the issue of corruption itself,” Sachdeva added.
However, the AAP has denied any changes in its leaders’ seats due to anti-incumbency in Delhi.
“BJP knows that the AAP government is going to be formed in Delhi again. Manish Sisodia can win from any seat. He has shown his big heart by offering his seat – Patparganj, which he won thrice, to Avadh Ojha this time,” Delhi minister Gopal Rai told the Press Trust of India.
Along with Sisodia, the AAP has also changed Delhi deputy speaker Rakhi Bidlan’s seat. Bidlan, who had contested and won from Mangolpuri, has been fielded from Madipur.
The list also includes candidates for the Timarpur and Shahdara seats, where sitting MLAs Dilip Pandey and Speaker Ram Niwas Goel have decided to sit out the elections. While Pandey, an old AAP hand since the India Against Corruption movement, had announced earlier that he would shift focus to other party work, Goel has decided to quit active politics.
Surendra Pal Singh Bittu and Jitender Singh Shunty, former BJP leaders who switched over to the AAP, have been fielded from the Timarpur and Shahdara seats respectively.
On November 21, the AAP had released its first list of candidates which included 11 names. In the 2020 elections, the AAP won 62 of Delhi’s 70 assembly seats while the remaining 8 were won by the BJP.