Arvinder Lovely, Sandeep Dikshit being considered for North East Delhi seat: Congress sources

New Delhi: The Congress is considering giving a ticket to its Delhi unit president Arvinder Singh Lovely to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from the North East Delhi constituency, party sources said on Tuesday.

Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit, the son of former chief minister Sheila Dikshit who fought from the seat in 2019, is also a probable candidate from the North East Delhi seat, party sources said.

Party leaders Alka Lamba and Jai Prakash Aggarwal are being considered from Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency, and former MP Udit Raj and former Delhi minister Raj Kumar Chauhan are probable candidates from North West Delhi, they said.

The party has finalised its seat-sharing arrangement with its INDIA bloc ally AAP for Delhi with the latter contesting four Lok Sabha seats. The AAP will contest the seats of New Delhi, West Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi and the Congress will field candidates in the other three seats.

"The probable candidates for North East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency are Arvinder Singh Lovely and Sandeep Dikshit. Party workers believe that if Arvinder Lovely fights polls from North East, he has good chances of winning.

“But since Sheila Dikshit was the candidate from the same constituency in 2019, Sandeep Dikshit might also be considered as a candidate," a source in Congress told PTI.

BJP's Manoj Tiwari had clinched the North East Delhi seat in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, defeating three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit by a record margin of 3,66,102 votes.

Lovely was the Congress candidate from East Delhi constituency in 2019, but lost to cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir of the BJP by a record margin of 3,91,222 votes.

From the Chandni Chowk seat, the Congress is could either field its Mahila Congress president Alka Lamba or party leader Jai Parkash Aggarwal, sources said. Aggarwal, contesting from the Chandni Chowk constituency in 2019, had received the highest number of votes with 29.67 per cent votes among all other Congress candidates.

For North West Lok Sabha constituency, sources said that former MP Udit Raj or former Delhi Minister Raj Kumar Chauhan may be considered as the probable candidates.

Currently, BJP's Hans Raj Hans is the MP from the North West Delhi (reserved) seat. In 2019, Hans had defeated second-placed Gugan Singh of the AAP with an emphatic margin of 5,53,075 votes.

In 2014, Udit Raj had won the seat on a BJP ticket by a margin of 1,06,802 votes.

In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had swept all the seven seats in Delhi and set new records in five constituencies where its candidates defeated their opponents with the highest margins ever.