In a twist of tale, the Congress candidate from the Dwarka constituency for the upcoming Delhi Assembly election is a former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and the current AAP candidate for the same constituency is a former Congress leader. Adarsh Shastri, the grandson of Lal Bahadur Shastri, has been removed from the AAP and Vinay Kumar Mishra, a Congress leader and son of former Congress MP Mahabal Mishra, has joined the AAP. Mishra will fight Shastri in the election from the Dwarka seat.
Shastri, sitting Dwarka MLA, had won from the seat with 59.08 per cent votes in 2015. Three days after being dropped by the AAP, he joined the Congress, accusing Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of flouting all democratic norms to "sell" tickets for the election for Rs 10-20 crore. Slamming Kejriwal for belittling the AAP legislators, Shastri said, "When I left a high-paying job with Apple Inc to join the AAP I thought an honest man would herald clean politics. But my experiences in the five years have taught me otherwise."
The Dwarka MLA alleged "huge corruption" in the AAP ticket distribution for the municipal corporation elections and added, Kejriwal would be best remembered for spreading corruption in politics.
Shastri was unhappy for being replaced by an "outsider", Mishra. Vinay was given the ticket a day after he joined the AAP. Both the MLAs claimed to have worked hard and transformed the constituency in the last five years.
Earlier, sources close to Shastri had told news agency IANS that the list came as a "surprise" to him as he was told by party chief Arvind Kejriwal that he should continue the party campaign. "He was told that he will recontest. The list came as a shock. The MLA was not in the loop about the process," IANS reported quoting a source. Also, he was unhappy for being replaced by an "outsider". "It would have been better to replace him with another party member and not an outsider if the party considered him incompetent," said the source.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party released the list of its candidates for the 70 Assembly seats of Delhi and dropped 15 sitting MLAs. Delhi is going to polls on February 8 as the tenure of the Assembly comes to an end in February. The result will be announced on February 11. The nomination process for the coming Delhi Assembly elections started on January 14. The last date of filing nomination is January 21. The scrutiny of nomination papers will be done on January 22. The last date for the withdrawal of candidature is January 24.
