BJP seeking strong option to face Rajmohan
Bidhuri, Aman Sinha among potential candidates to contest against Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson in East Delhi.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s decision to field Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, from the East Delhi constituency, has forced the Bharatiya Janata Party to think of a strong candidate from there. The seat, at present, is held by Congress’ Sandeep Dikshit, son of former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit.
Sources said that the BJP leadership wants to field Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, who won the recent Assembly election from Badarpur constituency, from East Delhi. However, Bidhuri is not too keen on this seat and instead wants to contest from the South Delhi constituency, which has a strong Gujjar community, to which he belongs.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the party had fielded former cricketer Chetan Chauhan, who lost by 2.42 lakh votes. After losing the elections, he did not remain active in the area.
Bidhuri had run for the East Delhi seat in 1991 on a Janata Dal ticket. Although he could not win, he got 21% of the votes, leading to the defeat of Congress stalwart H.K.L. Bhagat.
Besides Bidhuri, other names doing the rounds in- clude chief spokesperson of the Delhi BJP Aman Sinha, Virendra Sachdeva and Ma- hesh Giri. Aman Sinha is a practicing Supreme Court lawyer. A former Advocate General of Uttarakhand, he is credited with drafting the state’s Lokayukta Bill more than two years ago. “Who does not want to contest Lok Sabha elections?” Bidhuri said to The Sunday Guardian. “But everything depends on the party leadership. I will do whatever I am asked to. But I have neither asked the leadership for a Lok Sabha ticket, nor given any preference of constituency.”
In the last elections, Dikshit won 60% of the votes and Chauhan got only 32%. In 2004, the BJP fielded Lal Bihari Tiwari, who was defeated by Dikshit. Tiwari had earlier won the seat thrice. Sources said Tiwari is being considered for the North East Delhi constituency, which has a sizeable chunk of Poorvanchali voters. The BJP had planned to field Bhojpuri singer Manoj Tiwari there, but the plan was shelved as Tiwari wanted to contest from Bihar.