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Who is Vinod Kumar Binny
Currently a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vinod Kumar Binny has courted several controversies in the past. He was previously a member of the Delhi Legislative Assembly, representing the Laxmi Nagar constituency, where he had won in 2013 on an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket.
Binny was first elected to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) as an independent councillor from Laxmi Nagar. He later joined the Delhi Congress and worked towards strengthening the state unit. In 2013, influenced by Anna Hazare, he took an active part in the anti-corruption movement and subsequently joined the AAP, the political party that was born out of the movement.
In the 2013 Delhi elections, fielded by the AAP from Laxmi Nagar, he defeated the Congress heavyweight A K Walia by around 8,000 votes. Later, in December of that year, he made headlines for walking out of an AAP meeting called to decide the members for its Delhi government ministries.
In early 2014, Binny accused the AAP of betraying the people of Delhi and straying away from the principles on which it had been founded. He also attacked the party for allegedly backtracking on the promises made in the election manifesto, including on water and power sectors. Following these comments, the AAP formed a committee to look into his allegations and later terminated his primary membership of the party in a disciplinary action. A party statement said the decision had been taken by a disciplinary committee set up after Binny went to press with complaints against the Arvind Kejriwal government.
Binny then swiftly moved the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his MLA rights and continuation as an independent legislator. He also challenged the issuance of two whips by the AAP. He later withdrew the high court plea in 2014 after the interim dissolution of the Delhi Assembly.
Before the 2015 Delhi Assembly election, Binny joined the BJP and contested from Patparganj against senior AAP member Manish Sisodia. Riding on the Narendra Modi wave, Binny and his supporters were confident of victory, but the results turned out to be different. Sisodia trounced him by a huge margin of 28,761 votes.
Binny does not figure in the list of 57 candidates that the BJP has announced for the 2020 Assembly election. For the Patparganj seat, the BJP has fielded Ravi Negi against AAP’s unchanged candidate Manish Sisodia. For Laxmi Nagar, the BJP has named Ajay Kumar Varma against AAP candidate and sitting MLA Nitin Tyagi.
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