The prestigious New Delhi Assembly seat is likely to witness a fierce electoral contest with sitting MLA and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal pitted against the sons of former Delhi chief ministers as the BJP and Congress candidates.
Parvesh Verma, the son of former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma, on Saturday told PTI that he has been asked to prepare for contesting from the New Delhi constituency.
The Congress has already announced its candidate Sandeep Dikshit on the seat. He is son of three-time former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit.
Speaking at an event earlier on Friday, Mr Kejriwal rejected the rumours that he was going to shift from the New Delhi seat to some other constituency in the upcoming assembly elections which are due in February next year.
“There will be no change. I will contest from New Delhi seat and Chief Minister Atishi from Kalkaji,” he said when asked about the possibility of changing seats by them.
Referring to Mr Dikshit and Mr Verma, the AAP supremo said they are the sons of former chief ministers and claimed himself to be an “Aam Aadmi”.
The former Delhi chief minister asserted that the contest in the New Delhi constituency will be a battle between the “CM sons and the common man”.
Mr Verma, a former West Delhi Lok Sabha MP, said, “My party has asked me to prepare from this seat.” The list of BJP candidates is yet to come out, he added.
Asserting the BJP will win the New Delhi seat, Mr Verma claimed that Kejriwal has not fulfilled his promises despite representing the constituency thrice in the assembly since 2013.
The AAP supremo shot to fame in the political arena of the country by defeating then chief minister Sheila Dikshit from the New Delhi constituency in the 2013 assembly polls by a margin of over 25,000 votes.
In 2015, he again won from New Delhi defeating the BJP candidate by more than 31,000 votes. His victory margin reduced to 2, 000 votes in 2020 polls.
The New Delhi constituency is one of the smallest, numerically speaking, of the total 70 assembly seats and is dominated by the government employees as voters.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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