Delhi polls: AAP 2nd list betrays unease; 16 MLAs benched to battle anti-incumbency

The most talked-about highlight of AAP’s fresh list of 20 candidates has been the party’s decision to shift former deputy CM Manish Sisodia from East Delhi’s Patparganj constituency, which he had won thrice since 2013, to Jangpura in South Delhi.

Also read: Delhi polls: AAP releases second candidates' list; shifts Sisodia to Jangpura seat

No compromise on winnability

Delhi minister and senior AAP leader Gopal Rai maintained that the decision to shift Sisodia to Jangpura was taken in keeping with the former deputy CM’s advice to the party, for fielding new recruit and popular UPSC coach Avadh Ojha from Patparganj, as the constituency has a sizeable chunk of Purvanchali voters, the community Ojha belongs to.

Sisodia, of course, wasn’t the only prominent party leader who saw his constituency being changed in Monday’s list.

The party also shifted its Dalit leader and deputy Speaker in the Delhi Assembly, Rakhi Bidlan, from the Mangolpuri assembly segment in North West Delhi to Madipur in West Delhi. Like Sisodia, Bidlan too had been winning the Mangolpuri seat since AAP’s electoral debut in 2013, albeit with consistently high margins unlike Sisodia who managed to retain his Patparganj seat in the 2020 polls by just over 3,200 votes.

While Sisodia and Bidlan have seen their constituencies being changed, the bigger message in AAP’s latest list, sources said, was “no compromise will be made on winnability as criteria for selecting candidates”.

Also read: AAP will win more seats than 2020 polls, will form govt again in Delhi: Kejriwal

Axing unpopular MLAs

The Federal had first reported on November 19 that the AAP leadership was planning on dropping over a dozen incumbent MLAs against whom the party’s internal surveys had given an “adverse report”. Monday’s list, however, not just proved that Kejriwal would be unsparing in axing “unpopular MLAs” but, more importantly, hinted that the AAP’s assessment of the discontent against its legislators was far more acute than initially anticipated.

Of the 20 candidates the party declared on Monday, as many as 16 have replaced incumbent AAP MLAs, including Ojha and Rakesh Jatav, who have been named as replacements for Sisodia and Bidlan in the Patparganj and Mangolpuri seats, respectively.

In Jangpura, Sisodia too replaced incumbent AAP MLA Praveen Kumar, while sitting Madipur MLA Girish Soni has been benched to make way for Bidlan.

Watch | AAP says no to poll alliance in Delhi; who will benefit?

New crop of leaders

The decision of incumbent Timarpur MLA Dilip Pandey and Shahdara MLA Ram Niwas Goel (the current Delhi Assembly Speaker), to not contest the upcoming polls has also forced the AAP to field fresh faces in these seats.

The AAP has picked Surendra Pal Singh Bittu and Jitender Singh Shunty as its candidates from Timarpur and Shahdara, respectively. Both Bittu and Shunty are among a growing crop of leaders that the AAP has poached in recent weeks from the Congress and the BJP.

Bittu is a former two-term Congress MLA from Timarpur while Shunty, a 2021 Padma Shri recipient, had won the Shahdara seat on a BJP ticket in 2013.

AAP sources said the inclusion of Bittu and Shunty in its candidate list is a bid by the party to strengthen its hold on the Sikh community that has a sizeable presence across several of Delhi’s constituencies, including Jangpura where Sisodia will be trying his luck from for the first time.

The candidature of Shunty and Bittu also comes weeks after the AAP, in its first list, showed an increasing reliance on turncoats.

Of the 11 candidates named in AAP’s first list, as many as six, including former legislators Anil Jha, Chaudhary Zubair Ahmed, BB Tyagi, Brahm Singh Tanwar, Veer Singh Dhingan and Sumesh Shokeen, joined the party after quitting either the BJP or the Congress over the past two months.

In the Chandni Chowk and Krishna Nagar seats, Kejriwal has indicated that his party, like any other legacy political outfit, has no qualms in fielding kin of party leaders.

While Purandeep Sawhney has been fielded by the AAP as replacement for his father and incumbent AAP MLA Parlad Singh Sawhney (also a Congress import), Vikas Bagga has been chosen as the candidate from Krishna Nagar in place of his father and sitting legislator SS Tyagi.

The party has also fielded candidates from Rohini and Gandhi Nagar, both seats won by the BJP in the 2020 polls.

In the BJP bastion of Rohini, AAP’s Pradeep Mittal will take on Leader of Opposition and two-term legislator Vijender Gupta, while in Gandhi Nagar, Naveen Chaudhary, who had lost the 2020 assembly polls to the BJP’s Anil Bajpai by a narrow margin of 6000 votes, has been given another chance by Kejriwal to wrest the seat.

Battling anti-incumbency

AAP insiders told The Federal that the party leadership’s decision to bench such a large number of incumbent MLAs was taken to “minimise the electoral impact of anti-incumbency” against the 12-year-old party that has been in power in Delhi since 2013 (barring the period from February 2014 to February 2015 when President’s Rule was in force).

“We are regularly conducting surveys to assess the winnability of candidates, both sitting MLAs and new faces... the surveys gave adverse feedback against several of our MLAs, who have been replaced,” a senior AAP leader involved with the screening of candidates told The Federal.

Sources said that though party veteran Gopal Rai told reporters that the decision to shift Sisodia from Patparganj to Jangpura in keeping with Sisodia’s own wish, the leadership also took into account “inputs from our surveys which projected a very difficult contest” for the former deputy CM.

“In the last election itself, there were signs that Manish will have a tough time winning Patparganj even though he had retained the seat in 2015 with a big margin (over 28000 votes)... his victory margin came down to just 3200 votes in 2020,” a close aide of Sisodia said.

Further, he added, “Aside from Purvanchali voters, Patparganj has two other communities with a sizeable population – the Muslims and pahadis from Uttarakhand; the Muslims were unhappy with the AAP because of our attitude towards the anti-CAA protests which were raging at that time (in the run up to the 2020 polls), while pahadis voted en bloc for (BJP candidate) Ravi Negi... this time, both Arvind and Manish did not want to take any chance and so it was decided that Manish will contest from Jangpura”.

An AAP insider said the party had also mulled over the “possibility of changing (chief minister) Atishi’s seat” but “as of now it looks unlikely”.

The insider said that though Atishi, who won her first election from Kalkaji in 2020, may find the upcoming election “much more difficult than the last time”.

The dominant view in the party “at this time” is that changing constituencies of Sisodia and Atishi, both counted among Kejriwal’s closest confidants, would “send a wrong message” and “allow the BJP to launch an offensive asserting that all senior AAP leaders are searching for safe seats”.

AAP sources, however, did not rule out replacing more incumbent MLAs with fresh faces on the remaining 39 seats for which the party is yet to declare candidates.

“There may be some more surprises... we will try to announce a bulk of the remaining candidates by end of this month so that in a majority of the seats our candidates have the first-mover advantage and we can focus on addressing any anti-incumbency related grievances while also ensuring that MLAs who have been denied tickets do not work against the party; on a handful of seats, we may declare candidates after BJP announces its list,” a poll strategist for the party told The Federal.

No truck with Congress

AAP leaders said that Kejriwal’s decision to not have any alliance with the Congress for the upcoming elections was taken after “credible inputs by our team” suggested that the prospects of any electoral revival for the Grand Old Party, which has failed to win a single seat in the 70-member Delhi assembly in the past two elections, were nil.

“Initially, we thought the Congress may damage us in some seats, particularly those where Muslims and Dalits are in big numbers but our latest surveys show that the Congress’s Delhi Nyay Yatra (which concluded earlier this month) has had no positive impact for them and we have regained the confidence of these communities,” the AAP’s poll strategist quoted earlier said.

AAP leaders, however, concede that the challenge from the BJP in the upcoming elections would be “far more serious” than the last two elections.

And that though “Kejriwal remains the most credible leader to lead Delhi as CM, we can’t take chances in individual constituencies... even if we ignore brief term (in power) in 2013, the last two terms have been with massive majorities and with all the BJP propaganda over the excise policy case, corruption allegations, air pollution, Yamuna’s pollution... there is bound to be anti-incumbency”.