Delhi polls: Will Aam Aadmi Party's second chances bear fruit?

With the Delhi Assembly election less than a week away, the parties have been campaigning for their carefully picked candidates in full swing.

In terms of the candidates chosen, it seems like the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government is not ready to let go of its top guns.

A quick look at the incumbent AAP government’s report card in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections confirms the same.

Out of the 40 parliamentary seats that the party contested from across nine states, the AAP could manage only one win – Sangrur, Punjab where its candidate Bhagwant Mann beat the Congress’ Kewal Singh Dhillon with a margin of over a lakh.

The most embarrassing drubbing came from its home turf Delhi where the party had fielded seven candidates for the parliamentary seats and ended up winning none. The candidates in question -- Brijesh Goyal from New Delhi, Pankaj Gupta from Chandni Chowk, Raghav Chadha from South Delhi, Atishi from East Delhi, Dilip Pandey from North East Delhi, Gugan Singh from North West Delhi and Balbir Singh Jakhar from West Delhi. All of the seats were lost to the BJP.

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While the party has ignored 15 sitting MLAs, three among the Lok Sabha losers – Raghav Chadha, Atishi and Dilip Pandey -- have been given another shot at winning during the upcoming Assembly elections. Chadha has been fielded from the Rajinder Nagar seat, while Atishi and Pandey would be contesting from Kalkaji and Timarpur respectively.

Raghav Chadha

Chadha replaced Vijender Garg, the sitting AAP MLA from Rajinder Nagar who had won the 2015 elections by around 20,000 votes. Chadha had lost the South Delhi Lok Sabha seat to BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri by over three lakh votes.

Dilip Pandey

Dilip Pandey will be contesting the Timarpur assembly seat instead of sitting AAP MLA Pankaj Pushkar who had won with 64,477 votes. Pandey, on the other hand, lost the North East Delhi parliamentary seat to Delhi BJP’s Chief Manoj Tiwari by over five lakh seats. Pandey had even lost his deposit after garnering less than 1/6th of the votes polled.

Atishi Marlena

Coming to Atishi, the Oxford graduate who has been instrumental in AAP’s education policies, picked in place of Kalkaji’s sitting AAP MLA Avtar Singh who had won the 2015 elections by 55,104 votes. Atishi, who was fielded from the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat, lost to BJP’s cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir by over four lakh votes.

While the 2015 Delhi elections turned out to a breeze for the AAP with the party winning 67 of the 70 seats, it would be closely observed if the party can repeat the feat and if its luck rubs off on the three candidates looking salvage their Lok Sabha defeats.