Delhi Polls: Amit Shah holds core group meet to decide on candidates

With less than a month to go for the Delhi polls, BJP President Amit Shah held a night-long core group meeting on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday that lasted till 3 a.m. He has also convened the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC), on Monday evening to decide on candidates.

Monday’s CEC meeting, which is the party’s highest decision-making body, is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. at the party headquarters in Delhi and is likely to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, along with Shah and working president J.P. Nadda.

The nightlong meeting took the final feedback on probable candidates for each seats in Delhi, before declaring the names on Monday’s CEC.

The meeting was held at Shah’s residence which was attended by Nadda, General Secretary (organisation) B.L. Santosh, BJP’s Delhi in-charge Prakash Javedekar, state President Manoj Tiwari among others.

The party has held a series of survey in each constituency, which played a crucial role while discussing the probables for each seats, sources said.

Some of the prominent names that are likely to be considered for this election are Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Bagga from Tilak Nagar and Kapil Mishra from Karawal Nagar among others.

Apart from the three BJP leaders, Vijender Gupta, who had won in 2015, is almost certain to be repeated. Rumours of dropping some old BJP faces are though doing the rounds.

A section of central BJP leadership believes, giving chance to fresh faces from within the organisation can be fruitful, given they don’t carry any baggage with them. It will also send a positive message among the cadres.

Earlier, during the MCD election, which the BJP was tipped to lose, was turned around by not giving ticket to a single sitting councilor.

Though, BJP may not go that far with the Assembly polls, given how faction-ridden the party is, however, there is a strong pitch being made from within central leadership to give a sizeable section of young faces a chance to fight ii out against the Aam Aadmi Party, whom the IANS-CVoter Delhi Poll tracker predicted to win hands down, if the elections were to be held in the first week of January.

BJP may not release all the 70 names in one go, say sources and will rather go for a second and even a third list for Delhi polls.

After initial glitches on whether to declare a Chief Ministerial candidate or not, BJP has decided to fight the election without a CM face, “under the leadership of PM Modi”.

Last week, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi told IANS, it’s the ‘Lotus’ which is BJP’s face.

Delhi will go to poll on February 8 and the results will be out on February 11.