Rumblings in AAP over nomination for North East Delhi seat

Amidst dissidence in the party over selection of candidates for Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, over 60 AAP workers today protested outside the party office against the decision to field JNU professor Anand Kumar from North east Delhi seat terming him as an "outsider".
The party workers who protested claimed Anand Kumar does not belong to the constituency and that the party should have given ticket either to party leaders Gopal Rai or Shazia Ilmi.
"Prof Anand Kumar is an outsider and is an unknown face. Arvind Kejriwal should have given the ticket to a known face or at least to those who had filled the forms seeking candidacy from North East. Kumar had applied for a seat from South Delhi and not from North east Delhi," said Mumtyaj Ali, an AAP worker from Gokalpuri.

He added the party had not given ticket to any Muslim face in Delhi and should have considered Ilmi for North East Delhi seat.
"Shazia (Ilmi) is a known name. She would have swept the polls and bagged all the Muslim votes in the area. It has pockets like Seelampur, Mustafabad, Gonda, Burari and Timapur which has sizable Muslim votes," Ali said, adding party workers would have been happy even if it had nominated Gopal Rai, a senior AAP leader.
"It is we who have to go an campaign for him. People will ask us who Prof Kumar is and we will not be able to answer their questions," said Asif Mohammad, another AAP worker from Golakpuri.

Sources said AAP workers are also unhappy over the candidature of journalist Ashish Khetan from New Delhi and Rajmohan Gandhi from East Delhi constituencies.
"The party simply parachutes candidates and we don't even know them and expects us to work. You cannot impose someone coming from some other city and expect people to vote for them. The candidate should at least be a known name," said a disgruntled party worker.
Shazia Ilmi, who the party wanted to pit against Congress President Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli, had expressed her desire to contest from any seat in Delhi and is also learnt to be unhappy. Ilmi had yesterday said she was fine contesting anywhere from Delhi.