BJP's Vijender Gupta to take on Diskhit

Former Delhi BJP president Vijender Gupta will take on Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in the Dec 4 assembly election, the BJP said Wednesday, as it announced the names of 62 candidates, including four of the Akali Dal.

Gupta's candidature will make the New Delhi seat a prestigious affair as the third major contestant there is Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal.

Dikshit is yet to announce her candidature but it is widely believed that she will pitch for a fourth five-year term -- having ruled Delhi since 1998.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced the names of 58 of its candidatures while allocating four seats with a sizeable number of Sikhs to its long-time ally, the Akali Dal.

The BJP, which has been out of power in Delhi for 15 long years, is expected to name its candidates for the remaining eight of the 70 Delhi seats later.

The Akali Dal separately announced here and in Punjab that it will field candidates in Kalkaji, Shahdara, Hari Nagar and Rajouri Garden in alliance with the BJP. The candidates were not named.

The Akali Dal had contested four seats in Delhi in 2008 too.

Releasing its first list, the BJP said its chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan would be fielded from Krishna Nagar in east Delhi from where he has been elected four times.

Parvesh Verma, son of former Delhi chief minister Saheb Singh Verma, will be the candidate in Mehrauli.

Delhi's former tourism minister Surender Rathawal will contest from his traditional Karol Bagh constituency.

Among the other prominent candidates are Jagdish Mukhi (Janakpuri), Karan Singh Tanwar (Delhi Cantonment), Pawan Sharma (Uttam Nagar) Aarti Mehra (Malviya Nagar), Dharamdev Solanki (Palam), Ramesh Bidhuri (Tughlakabad) and Ram Veer Bidhuri (Badarpur).

--Indo-Asians News Service

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