While party supremo Arvind Kejriwal will contest from the New Delhi constituency, Chief Minister Atishi has been fielded again from Kalkaji. In its fourth and final list for the 2025 Delhi assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party has fielded convenor Arvind Kejriwal from New Delhi and chief minister Atishi from Kalkaji. The list of 38 candidates features other key leaders of the party as well, including Saurabh Bharadwaj, Gopal Rai, Satyendra Kumar Jain and Durgesh Pathak. Elections to the 70-member assembly of the national capital are due to be held in February 2025. Ahead of the assembly polls, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has ruled out any possibility of a pre-poll alliance with the Congress. He said that his party will fight the election on its own strength. Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj will contest the elections from Greater Kailash, while Gopal Rai has been fielded from Babarpur. AAP’s final list shows Satyendra Kumar Jain to be fighting the battlefield from Shakur Basti and Durgesh Pathak from Rajinder Nagar. Other candidates include Ramesh Pehalwan from Kasturba Naga, Raghuvinder Shokeen from Nangloi, Imran Hussain from Ballimaran, Jarnail Singh from Tilak Nagar, and Sanjeev Jha from Burari. Earlier, speculations were rife over a possible alliance between AAP and the Congress, the two INDIA bloc partners.
The rumours caught heat after Kejriwal attended an opposition group meeting over the alleged EVM and VVPAT machines tampering in the recently held Maharashtra assembly elections. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Kejriwal’s party and the Congress had contested in an alliance in the national capital as well as other parts of the country. In the lead up to the high-octane assembly polls, there is also a high possibility of Kejriwal facing the sons of two former Delhi chief ministers. While Congress has already fielded former CM Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit for the Delhi polls, the BJP is likely to field Parvesh Sahib Singh, son of ex-CM Sahib Singh Verma. Parvesh told on Saturday that he has been asked to prepare to contest the elections from the New Delhi constituency, the seat which Kejriwal will also be fighting for. AAP’s “10 years of misrule have brought Delhi to the brink of ruin”, and promised accessibility and responsiveness, vowing to be with residents “24 hours a day in your happiness and sorrow”, Parvesh added. Earlier this week, Arvind Kejriwal announced five guarantees for auto drivers in Delhi. Among the key guarantees are ₹1 lakh for marriage of daughters and life insurance worth ₹10 lakh. The AAP chief has also promised to provide ₹2,500 on Diwali and Holi as allowance to purchase school uniforms.While vouching for his party’s government, Kejriwal last month also issued a warning against the BJP. He said that if the saffron is voted to power then Delhiites would once again face power cut problems. “Besides, electricity is free in Delhi, but it is very costly in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar,” he said while taking a jibe at the BJP-ruled states.
