AAP now has seven ex-BJP leaders in its ranks: report

The 7 BJP leaders who defected to join the Aam Aadmi Party have all been given tickets for the upcoming Delhi assembly elections, according to a report in Hindustan Times. The BJP leaders who have joined AAP till now are former BJP MLA Ram Niwas Goel, Raghuvendra Shaukeen, who served as a BJP councillor, Ved Prakash, Kartar Singh Tanwar, Naresh Balyan and Fateh Singh. While Goel will contest from Shahdara, Shaukeen is the candidate from Nangloi Jat and Balyan will contest from Uttam Nagar, notes the report. Fateh Singh who joined AAP in December had served as the deputy speaker in the Delhi Assembly. He said at the time of joining AAP , “I have been associated with BJP for several years but realised that it is easy to make empty promises. Only AAP can give this country some direction.” Fateh Singh will fight the election from Gokulpuri, it was reported earlier. [caption id=“attachment_1838777” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] AAP’s Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal. PTI[/caption] Also on the list of defectors is BJP councillor Saurabh Bharadwaj who joined the AAP and is now being fielded from Wazirpur. As this PTI report had pointed out earlier, Bharadwaj’s move came as a jolt to BJP as his son Ashok is the district office bearer of BJP while daughter-in-law Poonam is a sitting councillor and the former BJP councillor is known to wield clout in Wazirpur. The AAP, which has in the past accused the BJP of trying to poach its MLAs in Delhi, has been playing up the importance of these defections. AAP leader Manish Sisodia told Hindustan Times “The exodus shows people are getting disenchanted with BJP because of their conduct and their politics of communalism. But we are not offering tickets to engineer defections.” BJP president Satish Upadhyay termed the defectors “power-hungry like Kejriwal,” and dismissed their exit as “political tourism,” which is a regular affair in each election. As of now the final dates of the Delhi election have not been announced, although polls are likely to take place in February. An opinion poll in December conducted by India Today Group-CICERO survey noted that BJP would get the majority although Kejriwal remains favourite to be the Chief Minister. The poll noted that Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party will more or less retain the same number of seats it got in December last year and will get between 25-31 seats. The BJP will consolidate gains with 34-40 seats. Congress, however, is likely to face near decimation, getting only 3-5 seats. AAP has already declared all 70 candidates for the election. Whether on not these ’experienced’ ex-BJP leaders will boost the party’s tally further, remains to be seen.