New Delhi: On 2 March, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced its first list of 195 candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha election in which 34 sitting MPs were dropped. Five of them are from Delhi, where the party faces a tough challenge from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its chief Arvind Kejriwal.
The list also indicates that Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans, who won from North West Delhi in 2019, is likely to be denied a ticket this time. The only Delhi MP to retain seat is Manoj Tiwari, the Bhojpuri actor-singer and former Delhi BJP chief, who represents North East Delhi.
The other MPs who have been replaced are former Union health minister Harsh Vardhan (Chandni Chowk), Union minister Meenakshi Lekhi (New Delhi), cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir (East Delhi), former Delhi CM Sahib Singh Verma’s son and two-time MP Parvesh Verma (West Delhi), and Ramesh Bidhuri (South Delhi).
The party has decided to accommodate fresh faces in all these seats, hoping to counter the anti-incumbency and the popularity of Kejriwal.
It was widely believed that the BJP was punishing those controversial MPs like Bidhuri, who attacked fellow MP Danish Ali, or Verma, who made several controversial statements. But, the party sources said that the decision was based more on performance, disconnect with voters, and inability to counter AAP’s growth in constituencies.
A senior Delhi BJP leader told ThePrint that the Delhi assembly polls, which are scheduled in February, were just a few months away after the Lok Sabha election and that “Prime Minister Modi’s biggest worry is Arvind Kejriwal.”
The leader added that despite the party’s hectic campaigning on the corruption issue and a few of its successes against Kejriwal, “his image among the people is not dented”.
The entire Government of India is sitting in Delhi, the leader claimed, “but this important territory is out of the hand of the BJP, despite the BJP’s heavy political investment in Delhi.”
“We started the freebie narrative to counter Kejriwal’s Delhi model, but the BJP had to change its track after the Himachal and Karnataka setback. We first brought Manoj Tiwari as the Delhi BJP president to focus on the Purvanchal voters, then brought common karyakarta Adesh Gupta as president to fight at the micro level in small clusters and jhuggi jhopdis, which is Kejriwal’s biggest strength. But nothing changed the BJP’s fortune,” the BJP leader highlighted.
“We used all the experiments in Delhi. The party needs new faces and strategy in Delhi.”
According to a BJP insider, “Prime Minister Modi in one of the meetings asked the BJP leaders to look for options to change all seven MPs of Delhi, but Manoj Tiwari survived due to the non-availability of a good replacement candidate on his seat and his credibility among the Purvanchal voters.”
A second senior leader of the BJP election committee told ThePrint that various factors and inputs decide the ticket, but the biggest criterion was winnability.
“In the survey, the voter connect of a few of the sitting MPs was low, workers were not happy, and they were found inaccessible to the public. But the party’s biggest worry was not only anti-incumbency, but their performance to check Kejriwal in their constituencies and its likely fallout impact in the next year’s assembly elections,” the leader highlighted.
“That is why new faces were introduced to check the anti-incumbency and bring fresh energy to counter Kejriwal.”
Despite Kejriwal’s consecutive victories in Delhi in the 2015 and 2020 assembly polls, the BJP protected its turf in the Lok Sabha polls by winning all seven seats in 2014 and 2019 courtesy the Modi wave. The win for the party came despite losing two assembly elections and the municipal polls in 2022.
A third BJP senior leader said that the party would shift its full attention to the assembly election after the Lok Sabha polls. He said that Parvesh Verma and Ramesh Bidhuri were needed for the Delhi assignment to challenge Kejriwal.
“The party changed the work responsibilities of leaders according to the situation. Vishnu Deo Sai was not given a Lok Sabha ticket from Chhattisgarh in 2019, but became the state chief and the chief minister later, after the 2023 assembly polls. Politics is unpredictable and the party keeps adapting to the changing circumstances,” the leader told ThePrint.
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Reasons for removal
Soon after the BJP list was announced, Kejriwal targeted the Delhi BJP MPs. He said Delhi had gained nothing from the seven sitting BJP MPs as they “clapped” whenever the work of his government was stalled by the Centre and the Lieutenant Governor.
The BJP sources said that the biggest complaint against East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir, New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi, and North West Delhi MP Hans Raj Hans was inaccessibility to the electorate and disconnect with the voters.
Harsh Vardhan, despite his humble nature, was fading, they said. He is one of the longest-serving Delhi politicians after Madan Lal Khurana, Sahib Singh Verma, and V.K. Malhotra. The party wanted a new face in his seat, they added.
“Bidhuri and Parvesh Verma were active, but the party was looking to assign them a Delhi organisational role and bring new faces to not give any chance to the AAP-Congress alliance on these seats,” one of the sources said.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP denied tickets to only two sitting MPs — East Delhi’s Mahesh Giri and North West Delhi’s Udit Raj. It repeated five sitting MPs and added two new faces — Gambhir in East Delhi and Hans in North West Delhi.
In 2024, except for Manoj Tiwari, the BJP has denied tickets to all six sitting MPs (five denied and Hans Raj Hans is in line to be denied a ticket).
Lekhi was replaced by former foreign affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj, who was elevated a year ago in the Delhi unit. Bansuri’s oratory skill and ability to get traction among the youth were the major factors that worked in her favour.
The party replaced Parvesh Verma with former mayor and Jat woman candidate Kamaljeet Sehrawat. Bidhuri was replaced with another Gurjar, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, who won as an Independent against Kejriwal’s tide in 2020. Ramvir Singh Bidhuri long political career and assembly record were valued.
Similarly, the party chose Praveen Khandelwal, who is popular among traders of Chandni Chowk for his continuous redressal meetings with central ministers in the last few years, replacing Harsh Vardhan who faded away after being removed from the health ministry amid the Covid crisis.
The second BJP leader quoted above said that the entire selection was made keeping in mind the assembly elections. “The BJP is looking forward to the assembly polls, and none of the BJP MLAs won in the constituencies of Meenakshi Lekhi, Harsh Vardhan, Parvesh Verma, and Ramesh Bidhuri in the 2020 state polls.”
The leader claimed that these MPs failed to ensure the victory of any MLA in their Lok Sabha constituency.
“The BJP has eight MLAs. Three won from East Delhi and three from Manoj Tiwari’s North East Delhi constituency. Ramvir Singh Bidhuri won on his own merit, and another won from North West Delhi. Even the (work) performance of these MPs was poor in the municipal polls,” the leader claimed.
In the 2022 MCD elections, he highlighted that in Meenakshi Lekhi’s constituency, out of 25 wards, the BJP won only five — the worst in all constituencies. In West Delhi, Parvesh Verma’s constituency, the party won 13 wards out of 38. In Hans Raj Hans’ constituency, the party wrested 14 out of 43.
In Ramesh Bidhuri’s constituency, the party won 13 out of 37. And in Harsh Vardhan’s Chandni Chowk constituency, it clinched 16 out of 30 wards.
“The performance of Gambhir and Tiwari was better. The BJP won 22 wards out of 36 in East Delhi and 21 out of 41 in North East Delhi. These factors were also kept in mind for deciding the candidates, how these MPs performed to check the AAP and ensured the BJP’s victory in other polls, besides their activeness and anti-incumbency,” the leader added.
Tried & tested method
It has been PM Modi’s tried and tested method of replacing sitting MLAs/MPs and even entire cabinets, like in Gujarat, to avoid anti-incumbency. Modi started it with the municipal polls way back in Gujarat during his chief ministerial days, the BJP insiders said.
In 2017, the BJP replaced its entire sitting councillors in the Delhi municipal polls and escaped the anti-incumbency of 15 years. However, the party failed to do so in the 2022 civic elections and lost to the AAP after losing the assembly polls in 2020.
BJP sources said that the party has denied tickets to more sitting MPs in those states where it faces a challenge like Chhattisgarh where the Congress is not so weak; Assam, where there is a multi-party alliance; and Delhi, where Kejriwal’s support is intact.
In the BJP-ruled states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, the party did not replace many sitting MPs, the BJP insiders added.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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