Even as high-voltage political drama involving Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal continues daily, the stock of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief — between serial controversies — remains high ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

In a record of sorts — created by a party that was born only 14 months ago — AAP has received over 1,500 applications for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. The candidates range from professionals, journalists, lawyers, research scholars, engineering and MBA students, SME entrepreneurs, auto rickshaw drivers, rickshaw-pullers and even some members of the political fraternity who have, or are planning to defect from AAP’s rivals.

Speaking to Business Line , an AAP party worker said, “We are excited to discover, that around 70 per cent of the applications were from new entrants into politics, while 40 per cent were women, and mostly, young women”.

Panel to scrutinise names

It is learnt that a core committee has been formed to go through the applications and personally meet with candidates before finalising the AAP candidate list.

According to Prashant Bhushan, a senior functionary of the AAP party, “The basic selection parameters will include honesty, and a clean and corruption-free record, without any criminal history. Some record of public service, recognition and visibility in their particular constituency will also count”.

Durgesh Pathak of AAP points out, “The profiles of most of the candidates is so impressive that it is difficult to imagine that they would want to make a career in politics”. The Delhi election will be one of the most closely watched. All seven seats in 2009 were swept by the Congress Party. In 2009, Kapil Sibal, now Telecom Minister, won from the Chandi Chowk constituency polling 465,713 votes.

Jai Prakash Agarwal won from North East, Sandip Dixit from East Delhi and Ajay Maken from New Delhi. Mahabal Mishra was declared winner from the West Delhi constituency and Ramesh Kumar from South Delhi. Krishna Tirath, the only woman candidate in the fray that year, won from the reserved constituency of North West Delhi by polling 487,404 votes. In sharp contrast, during the 2013 Delhi Assembly Elections, the Congress Party, won merely 8 of the 70 Assembly seats, while the BJP stopped short of a majority. The Congress registered a sharp 15 per cent reduction in vote share vis-à-vis the previous Assembly Elections. The BJP also suffered a loss of 3 per cent vote share, stopping at 31 seats — 5 short of the majority. AAP emerged a giant killer with 28 seats from amongst the 69 they contested, by polling 29.49 per cent of the votes. The rush of applications for the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi shows that AAP’s standing and brand value is bigger than any individual and candidates expect to win under the party umbrella rather than their own profile. In sharp contrast, both the BJP and the Congress will need to carefully choose candidates, especially since the Congress is fighting anti-incumbency and the BJP’s anti-incumbency votes will be divided, making AAP its key challenger for securing seats during the general elections to be held in Delhi in April .

Delhi has roughly 1.19 crore eligible voters, of which 66.1 lakh are men, 53.20 lakh are women and 4.05 lakh first-time voters. The Lok Sabha election is expected to see high participation going by the 66 per cent voter turnout witnessed during the resent Assembly elections — which saw amongst others, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit lose by a margin of nearly twice the number of votes to Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi assembly constituency.

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