New Delhi, 4 Jan

The BJP on Saturday released its first list of 29 candidates for the Delhi Assembly polls, fielding former MP Parvesh Verma from the New Delhi seat against ex-chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal. It has named another former MP Ramesh Bidhuri from Kalkaji, where Chief Minister and AAP candidate Atishi is in the fray.

The New Delhi seat, held by Kejriwal since 2013, will witness the former chief minister taking on the sons of two other former chief ministers. Verma is the son of Sahib Singh Verma, who had a two-year tenure as chief minister in the 1990s.

Former West Delhi MP Verma started his preparations for contesting from the seat even before he was announced as the official candidate, saying he had been given the go-ahead by national leaders.

The Congress candidate from the seat is former three-term chief minister Sheila Dikshit's son Sandeep Dikshit.

The BJP's first list features eight prominent leaders who switched over from the Congress and AAP in recent months.

Former Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely has been fielded from the Gandhi Nagar seat in east Delhi, replacing incumbent BJP MLA Anil Bajpai.

Bajpai had defeated Lovely from the seat in the 2020 polls.

Tarvinder Singh Marwah, a three-time former Congress MLA from Jangpura who joined the BJP in 2022, will contest from the same seat. He is pitted against senior AAP leader and former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.

Former transport minister Kailash Gahlot has been fielded from Bijwasan. The two-time Najafgarh MLA resigned as minister and quit AAP to join the BJP in November.

Raaj Kumar Anand, who resigned as a minister and quit AAP earlier this year, was fielded from the Patel Nagar seat. Chhatarpur MLA Kartar Singh, who also switched to the saffron party from AAP, has been fielded from the same seat.

ND Sharma, another former AAP MLA, will contest as a BJP candidate from Badarpur. The Badarpur seat was held by the BJP's Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from South Delhi earlier this year.

The saffron party has fielded its national office-bearers Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Ashish Sood from the Karol Bagh and the Janakpuri seats, respectively.  BJP national secretary Manjinder Singh Sirsa will contest from Rajouri Garden, which he had won in the 2015 elections. Former Congress councillor Kumari Rinku is the BJP's candidate from Seemapuri.

The BJP also retained incumbent MLAs OP Sharma (Vishwas Nagar), Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Vijender Gupta (Rohini), Ajay Mahawar (Ghonda) and Jitendra Mahajan (Rohtash Nagar).

The party has not yet announced its candidates for the two other seats it won in the 2020 polls -- Laxmi Nagar and the Karawal Nagar.

Former Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay will contest from Malviya Nagar. The party has fielded former MLA Manoj Shokeen against Delhi minister Raghuvinder Shokeen from the Nangloi Jat seat. The BJP's city unit chief Virendra Sachdeva said in a statement that the party had fielded "strong" candidates who would act as "catalysts" for change.

Elections to the 70-member Delhi Assembly are due next month. The BJP is pulling out all the stops to end AAP's hold on power in the city since 2013, except for a brief period when Delhi was under President's rule.