No problems in choosing Delhi LS nominees: Gadkari

Senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari, in-charge of Delhi elections, says he is about a week away from completing his report on Lok Sabha elections in the city and denies any hurdle or complication in narrowing down on winnable candidates.

“In the Assembly elections, 90 per cent of the candidates whom I had personally picked managed to win,” Gadkari, 56, who himself would be contesting the Parliamentary polls from Nagpur, told Deccan Herald.

The former BJP national president said he was in the final stage of giving his recommendations on the Delhi candidates and hoped all the seven candidates suggested by him would get elected.

“The names of seven Delhi nominees will reach the Parliamentary board by mid-March and the process will pick up pace,” said Gadkari, admitting there were sensibilities of party workers that needed to be accommodated while picking the candidates.

“During the Assembly elections, there was a lot of discussion within the party on whether to give tickets to councillors or re-nominate the sitting BJP legislators,” he said.“We settled for what was best for the party,” he said.

Gadkari, however, was non-committal on whether the party seniors would take a rigid stand on not fielding sitting legislators in the Lok Sabha polls scheduled for April 10.“I am not confirming or ruling out anything, wait and watch. All that we want is to win all the seven Parliamentary seats in the city,” he said, ruling out giving any Delhi seat to BJP’s ally Akali Dal for fighting the election.

The former party chief said the mood in the city unit was upbeat after the party emerged as the single largest party in the December Assembly elections and managed to shake out the Congress after its 15-year tenure in the Delhi government.

“The strategies used in the Assembly elections will be used with some fine tuning,” he said.

Gadkari also denied any fear of delay in announcement of names for the seven Lok Sabha. “Each candidate shall get ample time to campaign,” he said, denying murmurs that the BJP may end up with a situation like the one it faced ahead of the Assembly elections when delayed announcement of party candidates gave them little time to woo voters."

Sources in the BJP said the presence of the AAP in the contest and its unknown power to damage rivals was weighing on the minds of party leaders tasked with picking Delhi Lok Sabha candidates.