Rajouri bypoll a litmus test for Kejriwal govt
To be held on Sunday after seat fell vacant early this year.
New Delhi: West Delhi’s Rajouri Garden will go to polls on Sunday to elect its next MLA. The byelection would be a litmus test for the Aam Aadmi Party, two years after it won a thumping mandate in the national capital with a record 67 seats.
The seat fell vacant early this year after AAP’s Jarnail Singh resigned as MLA and unsuccessfully contested Punjab Assembly elections against SAD patron Parkash Singh Badal. For the BJP and Congress, success in the bypoll would show their continuing relevance in the city’s politics.
The Congress, which ruled the city for 15 years at a stretch, is leaving no stone unturned to win and register its presence in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. While the BJP was reduced to 3 seats, the Congress scored nil in the February 2015 Assembly elections.
The AAP has come up with a new face, Harjeet Singh, for the election. While Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal addressed one rally in the area, the Congress brought in newly-elected Punjab CM Amarinder Singh to address the voters in constituency dominated by the Punjabi community.
The two had several feuds in the run up to the Punjab elections where Amarinder, a Congress giant, trounced Mr Kejriwal-led AAP and relegated the BJP-SAD to the third position.
Congress candidate Meenakshi Chandela is a two-time councillor of Khyala.
Dubbing the bypoll as a “referendum” on the Kejriwal government, senior SAD leader Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday said that Akali-BJP candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa will register a massive victory. The ex-deputy CM of Punjab was campaigning for Mr Sirsa.
“It is a referendum on the Kejriwal government. It will reflect the feelings of the people of Delhi who are deeply distressed by over two years of AAP rule,” he said.
The BJP-SAD combination has fielded veteran Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who had won the seat in 2013.
In the recent Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Managem-ent Committee election, he defeated the Congress-backed candidate from the Punjabi Bagh ward.
Other candidates who are in the fray are Hardeep Singh (Independent), Lalit Taak (All-India Forward Bloc) and Devinder Singh Nagi (Purvanchal Mahapa-nchayat).
The constituency is a mix of a resettlement colonies.