The BJP’s central election committee has released a list of 57 candidates, which includes former AAP MLA Kapil Misra, who will be fielded from Model Town Constituency.
BJP national executive member Vijender Gupta is the senior leader in the list, announced by party’s State unit president and the State BJP’s face in the campaign, Manoj Tiwari.
The BJP central committee had finalised the candidates on Thursday. Delhi is going to polls on February 8.
The ruling AAP had announced its candidates for all the 70 seats earlier this week.
The Congress has finalised its candidates for some seats but is waiting for the lists of the AAP and the BJP before announcing them; the list is likely to be announced in a day or two.
Apart from Gupta, former Mayors Ravinder Gupta and Yogender Chandolia find a place in the BJP’s list. The list has 11 SC and four women candidates. Tiwari said the candidate against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi seat will be announced later.
Other senior BJP activists such as OP Sharma, Jagdish Pradhan, Shikha Rai, Neelkamal Khatri, Surendra Singh Bittu, Vikram Bidhuri, Suman Kumar Gupta, Ashish Sood, Ravi Negi, Mahendra Nagpal, Lata Sethi and Jai Prakash will contest the polls.
In 2015, the AAP had won 67 seats and the BJP could get three seats while the Congress returned empty handed.
The BJP is hopeful of improving the performance this time despite opinion polls predicting an edge for the AAP. Delhi has been seeing students’ protests over fees hike and also against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
The BJP recently held a rally to felicitate Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the passage of a law legalising colonies in Delhi.