Kanhaiya, two ex-mps: Cong’s LS poll picks

IN WHAT party leaders termed a “winning combination of its old and new guards”, and a decision which bore the imprint of its senior leader Rahul Gandhi, the Congress on Sunday announced it would field two former MPS and a young “firebrand” leader, in whom it was “investing for the future”, as its candidates for three Lok Sabha seats in the Capital.

The party announced it would field Jai Prakash Agarwal from Chandni Chowk, Udit Prakash (North West) and former JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar (North East Delhi). The Congress’s INDIA bloc ally, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAM), has already declared its respective candidates for the East, South, West and New Delhi seats, which it is contesting as part of the alliance.

According to a report by The Indian Express on April 12, 37year-old former student leader Kanhaiya, who is in-charge of the Congress students’ body, the National Students Union of India (NSUI), was likely to make his political debut in the Capital this Lok Sabha elections. Kanhaiya will go up against popular Purvanchali celebrity Manoj Tiwari — a two-time MP, former chief of its state unit, and the sole incumbent to have been fielded by the BJP on any of Delhi's seven Lok Sabha seats — for a potential third term in Parliament.

“Kanhaiya is none other than Rahul ji’s choice and paves the way for his elevation in more ways than one — especially organisationally — for him. The party has invested in him not only as a Purvanchali face, but a future leader who will likely be at the core of the Congress’s resurrection in the capital in the coming days,” a senior leader from the party’s Delhi unit said.

This will be Kanhaiya’s second attempt at a Parliamentary contest after unsuccessfully going up against Union Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister, Giriraj Singh, on a Communist Party of India (CPI) ticket from Bihar’s Begusarai Lok Sabha seat in 2019.

“In accommodating Kanhaiya in Delhi, irrespective of his relative winnability and popularity there, the Congress has also honoured alliance dharma in the context of Bihar where the Lalu Yadav-led RJD as well as the CPI, both part of the INDIA bloc, are understood to have negotiated his staying clear of the contest in the state at least this time around,” another leader said.

Sources said the final call on its candidates for Delhi, which was more or less taken on Saturday, received a nod from the party’s high command following last-minute consultations with Deepak Babaria, AICC in-charge for Haryana and Delhi, to the city on Sunday.

In addition to picking Kanhaiya, choosing 80-year-old Agarwal, who rose through the ranks of the Congress’s organisation over five decades after starting out as a District President in the Youth Congress in 1973, over former, three-time Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep for the Chandni Chowk seat, sources said, was the other “tough call” that its national leadership took over two days.

“After being elected to the Lok Sabha in 1984 for the first time, Agarwal ji represented the Congress in Lok Sabha for three more terms till 2014. The high command was not only in favour of fielding him over Sandeep, who has age on his side, due to his seniority but also because he remains as popular as he always was in his constituency, giving him an edge in terms of winnability,” the leader said.

On the other hand, 66-yearold Raj, who has previously spent a solo term in the Lok Sabha after having been elected on a BJP ticket in 2014, and is a former Indian Revenue Service who quit the bureaucracy after a career spanning around 15 years to form his own political outfit, the Indian Justice Party, and take to social work, has been fielded after spending five years in the Congress’s fold post his resignation from the BJP in 2019.

“Udit ji is immensely popular in the North West Delhi seat; our surveys posit that his winnability is not only enough to win but do so with a significant margin. The party was so confident about his chances that it re-negotiated the terms of the alliance with the AAP to give up the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat and choose the North West seat instead,” the leader added.