The February 7 Assembly elections are going to witness 95 former legislators testing their electoral luck.
Out of the 95 former lawmakers in the fray, a total of 43 were elected as MLAs at least once between 1993 and 2008.
Among these there are three contestants who were elected as MPs while they were legislators and have now again decided to find a place in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. These include Congress party’s Ajay Maken and Mahabal Mishra and BJP’s Krishna Tirath.
Sixty-two former MLAs in the fray won the previous Assembly poll in the 2013.
Out of these 32 are now fighting on BJP ticket, 21 are AAP candidates and eight have been fielded by the Congress.
The lone independent in the last Assembly is also contesting this election.
The Congress has fielded 33 former legislators who won Assembly polls in 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008.
The BJP has put money on half a dozen such former-MLAs who won an Assembly poll between 1993 and 2008.
The AAP has given ticket to two such candidates – Fateh Singh and Ramnivas Goel. The two leaders had won the Assembly polls in 1993 as BJP candidates.
The Bahujan Samaj Party has given ticket to a former legislator of 2008 Surender Kumar from Gokalpur seat.
Another legislator from the 2008 Assembly, Bharat Singh who won as an independent candidate from Najafgarh has this time been given a ticket by the Indian National Lok Dal.
He fought the 2013 poll on the INLD ticket but lost the contest.
The February 7 elections, which will be the third election in the city in 14 months, will also be remembered for one of the key political party like the BJP breaking away from the convention and fielding a chief ministerial candidate who is not a former MLA.
Former Indian Police Service officer Kiran Bedi of the BJP has never contested an election but she has projected as the next chief minister by the saffron party.
The other parties’ chief ministerial candidates – Arvind Kejriwal of the AAP and Ajay Maken of the Congress – are both former legislators.
DH News Service
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