AAP picks its four Delhi LS candidates
Samad Hoque
New Delhi, February 27
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today announced its four Lok Sabha candidates for Delhi. The party also named one candidate for Haryana.
The Political Action Committee of AAP met today to finalise the candidates.
Sushil Singh to contest from Kurukshetra
Party leader Somnath Bharti will contest the elections from New Delhi, while Sahiram Pahalwan will be the AAP’s face from South Delhi. Mahabal Mishra will contest from West Delhi and Kuldeep Yadav from East Delhi.
Sahiram Pahalwan
- Sahiram Pahalwan is a two-time AAP MLA from the Tughlakabad constituency. Sahiram, who comes from the Bidhuri clan of Gurjjar community, won the 2015 Assembly elections after defeating Vikram Bidhuri of the BJP by a margin of 33,701 votes.
- During the 2020 Assembly elections, Sahiram once again defeated Bidhuri. However, this time, the winning margin was 13,000 votes, but his vote share was 54 per cent. He was elected as Deputy Mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation in 2013 on the BSP ticket. He had defeated Parveen Rana of the Congress by a margin of just 11 votes. He also served as a councillor for two terms.
Somnath Bharti
- Somnath Bharti is a lawyer-turned-politician, who won the Assembly elections from Malviya Nagar in 2013 on the AAP ticket. In the first 49 days of the AAP government, he was the Minister of Law, Tourism, Administrative Reforms, Art and Culture.
- Bharti was re-elected from Malviya Nagar in 2015 and 2020. In 2015, he defeated BJP candidate Dr Nandani Sharma by a margin of 15,897 votes. While, in 2020, he defeated BJP candidate Shailendra Singh by a margin of 18,144 votes.
- Bharti also served as chairman of the Committee on Privileges of the Delhi Legislative Assembly from 2016 to 2017.
Mahabal Mishra
- Mahabal Mishra is a veteran politician of the national capital. He was first elected as a councillor in the Municipal Corporation in 1997-98 and was also a member of the DDA from 1997-2008.
- He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2009 on the Congress ticket. As an MP in the 15th Lok Sabha, he was a member of three parliamentary committees – Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas, Consultative Committee on Home Affairs and Consultative Committee on Power. Mishra is also a three-time MLA, who was elected to the Delhi Legislative Assembly in 1998, 2003 and 2008.
- He lost the previous Lok Sabha elections to BJP candidate Parvesh Sahib from the West Delhi constituency by a huge margin of over 5 lakh votes. He joined AAP after the MCD elections in 2022.
Kuldeep Kumar
Son of a sanitation worker, Kuldeep Kumar became a volunteer for AAP in 2013 and continued to work for the party. The party chose him as a councillor candidate during the MCD elections in 2017 when he was elected to the civic body. Kuldeep later won the Assembly elections in 2020 from the Kondli constituency, defeating BJP candidate Raj Kumar by a margin of 18,000 votes.
In Haryana, the party has announced the candidature of Sushil Singh from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat.
As part of the INDIA bloc, the AAP held the seat-sharing talks with the Congress and decided to contest the elections from four seats — New Delhi, West Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi. The Congress will contest from North-West Delhi, North-East Delhi and Chandni Chowk.
In Goa, the Congress will contest the Lok Sabha elections on both the seats, while in Gujarat, it will field its candidates on 24 seats and AAP will announce its candidates on two seats – Bharuch and Bhavnagar.
In Haryana, Congress will contest on nine seats, while AAP will contest from Kurukshetra. However, both the parties have mutually decided to go alone in Punjab.
