Delhi Assembly Polls 2025: AAP releases 2nd list of candidates; Manish Sisodia shifted to Jangpura

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday announced its second list of 20 candidates for Delhi Assembly Polls, dropping 16 sitting MLAs and shifting former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and former Deputy Speaker Rakhi Bidlan from their constituencies to new ones.

Earlier on November 21, it had announced 11 candidates, dropping three sitting MLAs and giving tickets to six turncoats besides finding replacement for two AAP MLAs who shifted to BJP. Altogether, AAP has named 21 new faces in their sitting seats.

With this, AAP has also announced candidates in all eight seats won by the BJP in 2020. Seven of the 20 candidates are councillors, including Leader of House in Municipal Corporation Mukesh Goel fielded from Adarsh Nagar.

The Assembly election in Delhi is scheduled for February and in the 2020 elections, AAP had won 62 seats leaving the rest eight to BJP. Congress did not win a single seat.

Sisodia has been shifted from Patparganj, which he won thrice, to Jangpura and educator Avadh Ojha, who joined AAP after trying to get a ticket from Congress and BJP in earlier election, will try his luck in the constituency. Sisodia’s majority had declined from 28,761 (2015) to 3,207 (2020).

Senior Minister and AAP Delhi Convenor Gopal Rai said Sisodia can win from any seat in the capital and it was he who proposed Ojha’s name for the constituency.

Bidlan, who won thrice from Mangolpuri, will now fight from Madipur. She had increased her winning margin from 10,600 in 2013 to 30,126 in 2020. Rakesh Jatav Dharmarakshak is the new candidate from Mangolpuri.

The party also announced candidates for Timarpur and Shahdara from where sitting MLAs Dilip Pandey and Speaker Ram Niwas Goel have opted out. In their place, AAP has announced BJP turncoats Surender Pal Singh Bittu and Jitender Singh Shunty respectively.

A former BJP Assembly candidate Parvesh Ratan will fight from Patel Nagar which was represented by Raaj Kumar Anand, an AAP minister who resigned ahead of Lok Sabha elections and first went to BSP before joining the saffron party.

AAP sources said they have the focus on ‘aam aadmi’ in the second list too while rewarding hard working professionals like Shunty and Ojha tickets. The clear message is that hard work and performance is the only parameter for getting the ticket, they added.

While the AAP is downplaying the shifting of Sisodia to a new seat claiming that Ojha is an apt replacement for him and would ensure that Patparganj remains a hub of education, sources indicated that the party wanted to ensure that the former Chief Minister wins from a safer seat. BJP has already made it clear that they would field a senior leader to ensure that there is no walkover for him. 

Sisodia said he considered himself a teacher and not a politician and Patparganj was not just an assembly constituency for him, but the heart of the education revolution in Delhi. 

"When Avadh Ojha-ji joined the party and there was a demand to field him in the elections, all I could think was that there could be no better seat than Patparganj for a teacher. I am happy to hand over the responsibility of Patparganj to another teacher,” he said.

“Now I am ready to work with everyone in Jangpura to do the same work that I did in Patparganj for education, service and development. For me, politics is not a means to power, but a means to education, honesty and public welfare. From Patparganj to Jangpura, my resolve is firm: to make Delhi even better,"