The Aam Aadmi Party has renominated two former ministers Manish Sisodia and Rakhi Birla, while cancelling out on the ex-Patel Nagar MLA Veena Anand in the second list of candidates released on Saturday.
In the list of 13 candidates, the party has retained six winning candidates. But at the Babarpur Assembly constituency, the bet will be again on the senior party leader Gopal Rai, who came third in the last Assembly elections. The AAP had initially indicated that many of those who had come third may not be repeated.
Anand is the first former legislator to be dropped so far. The party has replaced her with Hazari Lal Chauhan, brother of former urban development minister and Congress MLA from Mangolpuri Raj Kumar Chauhan.
Chauhan had contested civic polls in 1983. At Nangloi Jat Assembly constituency, the party has fielded a local MCD councillor Raghuvinder Shoukeen, who had won on the BJP ticket.
Earlier, the AAP, while repeating the line-up for last Assembly constituency, had announced a list of 22 candidates, which included 12 former MLAs.
In its second list, the party has declared renomination for former legislators Sisodia (Patparganj), Birla (Mangolpuri), Madan Lal (Kasturba Nagar), Prakash Jarwal (Deoli), Dinesh Mohania (Sangam Vihar) and Raju Dhingan (Trilokpuri) from the same constituencies they had won last time.
Dhingan successfully made the cut, despite being cornered by the party for his ineffective handling of Trilokpuri riots.
The new names include Imran Hussain from Ballimaran, Asim Ahmed Khan from Matia Mahal, Hazari Lal Chauhan from Patel Nagar, Ram Niwas Goel from Shahdra, Mahindra Goel from Rithala and Raghuvinder Shoukeen from Nangloi Jat.
The AAP said that the national convenor Arvind Kejriwal’s name is to be announced at the end after all candidates formally propose him for the future chief ministerial post.