New Delhi: The Congress party has joined hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to contest the upcoming Delhi Assembly polls on February 8. It is the first time that the Congress is contesting Delhi elections in an alliance.
Congress leaders Haroon Yusuf, Arvinder Singh Lovely, Alka Lamba and Poonam Azad were among the prominent party candidates who filed their nominations for the Delhi Assembly elections on Monday.
Lovely has been fielded from east Delhi's Gandhi Nagar, a seat he has represented four times in the past.
Yusuf is fighting from his pocket borough of Ballimaran, while Lamba, a former AAP MLA who joined the Congress last year, is contesting from Chandni Chowk.
Former Delhi Assembly speaker Yoganand Shastri's daughter Priyanka, is in the fray from R K Puram.
Poonam Azad, the wife of Congress' campaign in-charge Kirti Azad, also filed her nomination on Monday. She is contesting from Sangam Vihar.
RJD announced candidates on all the four seats alloted to it on Monday. The party in a tweet declared its four candidates - Pramod Tyagi (Burari), Riyazuddin Khan (Kirari), Shakti Kumar Bishnoi (Uttam Nagar) and Niram Kumar Singh (Palam).
As a member of United Progressive Alliance (UPA), RJD contested recent Jharkhand Assembly polls along with JMM and Congress and bagged a seat.
Over 40 BJP candidates file nomination papers
More than 40 BJP candidates including its Leader of Opposition in the outgoing Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta on Monday filed their nomination papers for the February 8 polls.
Gupta, sitting Rohini MLA, filed his paper from the same seat. He was accompanied by Hans Raj Hans, party MP from North West Delhi.
"BJP candidates have worked very hard on the ground in the past five years and I am sure that they will do very well," former cricketer and BJP's East Delhi MP Gambhir said on the occasion.
The BJP had floated a first list of 57 possible candidates on Thursday. However, the party did not name any candidate against AAP leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. BJP's Delhi Chief Manoj Tiwari, who released the list, had said the candidate will be announced soon.
"More than 40 BJP candidates filed their nomination papers in presence of their supporters on Monday. The candidates who filed the nominations included BJP national secretary Sardar R P Singh (Rajender Nagar), and Delhi BJP general secretary Ravindra Gupta(Matia Mahal)," said a Delhi BJP statement.
Senior party leaders and Union ministers including Harsh Vardhan, Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma and Ramesh Bidhuri, all three MPs, accompanied the candidates in Assembly segments lying in their Lok Sabha constituencies.
SAD will not contest Delhi polls
The Shiromani Akali Dal on Monday said it will not contest the Delhi Assembly polls next month after it was asked by its ally BJP to change its stand on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Addressing a press conference, SAD leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa said that during three poll-related meetings with the BJP, his party was asked to consider its stand on CAA.
"During our meeting with the BJP, we were asked to reconsider our stand on CAA but we declined to do so. Shiromani Akali Dal is of the firm stand that Muslims cannot be left out of CAA.
"We are also strongly against the National Register of Citizens (NRC)," Sirsa, who contested on a BJP ticket from Rajouri Garden seat, said.
BJP gives three seats to JD(U), LJP
Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari said the party leadership has taken a decision to give two seats to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-headed JD(U) and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan-headed LJP.
JD(U) spokesperson K C Tyagi welcomed the development, saying it reminded him of the "old NDA" of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani when the BJP and its allies fought elections together.
However, LJP leader Kali Pandey, who is his party's in-charge for the 70-member Delhi assembly polls, said he was unaware of any such development. The LJP had earlier announced that it will contest on all seats in the national capital and name several candidates.
The JD(U) will contest from Sangam Vihar and Burari constituency and the LJP from Seemapuri, BJP sources said.
In 2015, Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP had won 67 of the 70 seats, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured the rest three. Congress, however, drew a blank.
(With inputs from PTI)
