New Delhi: With the candidature of big parties coming out one by one for the upcoming assembly elections in Delhi, the most fierce tripartite contest is likely to take place in the New Delhi constituency where former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will face two heirs of former chief ministers.
The Congress has fielded Sandeep Dixit, son of late Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, and the BJP has nominated former Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma's son, MP Pravesh Verma against the AAP convenor, setting the stage for a neck-to-neck fight.
Dixit has the advantage of his mother, who represented the New Delhi seat for 15 years and the work done by her while Verma, being a two-term MP twice and one-time MLA, has the opportunity to turn electors' opinion in his favour with the work done by his father. Verma started preparing for the election a month before his candidature was finalised. He also increased public outreach.
Dixit is also not a laggard as a fortnight ahead of Congress announcing his name, he started public connect in the constituency.
It is worth mentioning here that in the seven elections held so far in the New Delhi assembly, BJP won the first election and both Congress and AAP retained the seat three times. In the last election, Kejriwal defeated BJP candidate Sunil Yadav by a huge margin of 21,697 votes while the deposit of the Congress candidate was forfeited.
In the 2013 assembly elections, AAP entered the electoral fray for the first time and Kejriwal himself contested against Sheila Dikshit from this seat. The results took everyone aback as Dixit was defeated by a margin of 25,864 votes. While Kejriwal bagged 44,269 votes, Dikshit had to be contained with just 18,405 votes and BJP's Vijender Gupta came third with 17,952 votes. In the 2015 elections, Kejriwal defeated BJP candidate Nupur Sharma by a huge margin of 31,583 votes, while Congress candidate Kiran Walia's deposit was forfeited after getting only 4,781 votes.
The first assembly election in the seat was held in 1993 when it was known as Gole Market. At that time, the BJP nominated former cricketer Kirti Azad who turned out to be the victor and a BJP government was formed. In 1998, Congress leader Sheila Dixit won this seat three times in a row in 1998, 2003 and 2008. In the 2008 delimitation exercise, the nomenclature of the Gole Market seat was changed to the New Delhi seat.
From 1956 to 1993, Delhi was bereft of a Chief Minister and an Assembly as it was administered by the 61-member Metropolitan Council. Delhi got an Assembly after the 1993 elections.
After the 1998 elections, it became a coincidence that whoever wins from this seat, will become the Chief Minister three times in a row. First Dikshit and her successor Kejriwal held the chief ministership three times in a row.
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