A triangular contest is in the offing in central-west Delhi's Rajinder Nagar constituency which has opted for a change in the last three assembly elections.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has replaced the sitting MLA Vijender Garg with Raghav Chadha, who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi seat. BJP has nominated Sardar RP Singh as its candidate in Rajinder Nagar and the Congress has announced Rocky Tuseed's nomination.
Garg had won the 2015 Delhi polls with over 54 percent votes but the party has replaced him with Chadha who plans to bring seven area-specific manifestors for the constituency.
While Chadha said that Garg has supported his candidature, a news report on the Times of India quoted the former AAP MLA as saying that he was "sacrificed to oblige a big name in the party."
"I do not know the criteria which were used to drop me. I feel I was sacrificed to oblige a big name in the party. CM had asked me not to worry about a ticker," ToI
BJP has nominated former MLA and its Sikh face, RP Singh, from the constituency. Singh, who currently serves as national secretary in the party had won from the constituency in the 2013 Delhi polls but lost to Vijender Garg in subsequent polls in 2015.
At 25, Congress' Rocky Tuseed is the youngest candidate in the poll fray from Rajendra Nagar assembly constituency and has assets worth Rs 55,000, according to his election affidavit. Tuseed was president of Delhi University Students' Union in 2017 and ended the five-year-drought for the Congress-affiliated National Student's Union of India.
The former DUSU president (2017-2018) was in the midst of a controversy when he was disqualified from the post in 2017 for not disclosing in his nomination form that disciplinary action had been taken against him for assaulting a student. In August 2018, he was reinstated after the Delhi High Court put on hold its single judge order.
Largely and upper-middle-class locality, Rajinder Nagar constituency has Jat-dominated Dasghara and Yadav-dominated Todapur pockets in it. However, over the years, it has seen a sharp demographic shift with thousands of displaced families making the area their home after Partition.
In recent years, the demography in areas such as Inderpuri, Naraina Vihar and Pandav Nagar has again changed to with a substantial number of Purvanchalis residing.
