Lok Sabha Election 2024: BJP names Lovely in list of star campaigners for Delhi
Arvinder Singh Lovely with union minister Hardeep Singh Puri at BJP headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) eyeing to win all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, the party’s national general secretary Arun Singh on Monday released a list of 40 star campaigners, which included former Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely who joined the BJP last week.
Lovely quit as the Delhi Congress chief on Saturday, citing the alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress.
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Besides, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief JP Nadda, defence minister Rajnath Singh, home minister Amit Shah, Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Hardeep Singh Puri, Smriti Irani and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath will also rally support for the seven BJP candidates in Delhi, according to the list that the party shared with the Election Commission of India. However, their schedule has not been finalised yet.
All the seven seats in Delhi will go to polls on May 25.
The list of star campaigners also included Delhi BJP MPs who have been dropped this time — Chandni Chowk MP Harsh Vardhan (replaced by trade leader Praveen Khandelwal), New Delhi MP Meekanskhi Lekhi (replaced by Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj), West Delhi MP Pravesh Verma (replaced by former mayor Kamaljeet Sehrawat), South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri (replaced by leader of opposition in Delhi assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri), East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir (replaced by former East Delhi mayor Harsh Malhotra).
A week after resigning from the post of Delhi Congress chief, Lovely rejoined the BJP, along with four other Congress leaders — former Delhi minister Raj Kumar Chauhan, former MLAs Naseeb Singh and Neeraj Basyoa, as well as leader Amit Malik — on Saturday.
Lovely was first elected as an MLA in 1998, following which he served as an legislator for four terms, representing the Gandhi Nagar constituency in East Delhi till 2013. He also worked as a cabinet minister under the Sheila Dikshit’s government between 2003 and 2013. Lovely served as the Delhi Congress president from 2013 to 2015, resigning soon after the Congress suffered a humiliating defeat in the Delhi assembly elections. Lovely was a prominent Sikh face of the Congress in Delhi, and enjoyed a tall stature in the politics of the Capital. He also enjoyed a good rapport with a large number of Congress leaders and workers besides the public.
The list also includes Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami, Rajasthan CM Bhajan Lal Sharma, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sharma and Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini.
The party’s North East Delhi candidate Manoj Tiwari is expected to campaign for the party candidates on all the seats of Delhi.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva, former president Vijay Goel and Satish Upadhyay also feature in the list. “The party’s campaigning is going on in full swing across all the seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi and will be intensified soon. The star campaigners will be rallying support for the seven BJP candidates in Delhi and their schedules will be shared after they are finalised. The BJP candidates are getting a lot of support from people. Besides winning the seven seats of Delhi, BJP will win over 400 seats in the country and PM Modi will return to power for the third consecutive term,” said Sachdeva.
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