Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today announced its final list of eight candidates for the Delhi Assembly polls, thus completing the process of naming its nominees for all 70 seats here.
In the list declared today, AAP has named Sarita Singh, president of its students' wing -- Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti -- from Rohtash Nagar while Haji Yunus, an office bearer of the party's minority wing, has been given the ticket from Mustafabad.
AAP got a shot in the arm after former BJP councillor Saurabh Bharadwaj joined the party and was fielded from Wazirpur. Bharadwaj's move would come as a jolt to the saffron party as his son Ashok is the district office bearer of BJP while daughter-in-law Poonam is a sitting councillor. He is also known to wield clout in Wazirpur where 80 per cent of the people reside in JJ clusters.
Pramila Tokas, an Independent councillor, has been given the ticket from RK Puram, while Pankaj Puskhar, the campaign manager for Timarpur constituency, has been nominated to contest the same seat, replacing its former legislator Harish Khanna.
In Mehrauli, the party has given the ticket to a prominent local Jat leader, Chaudhary Goverdhan Singh, while AAP volunteers Pawan Sharma and Ajay Dutt have been fielded from Adarsh Nagar and Amebdkar Nagar, respectively.
With this, AAP has repeated 21 of its former legislators and given chance to 35 fresh faces.
Trying to strike a balance, the party has also fielded six women candidates and given tickets to four Sikh and five Muslim faces. It has also fielded all its former ministers who were part of the Arvind Kejriwal government during AAP's short stint in power in Delhi.
The party also has a blend of candidates from different walks of life -- from former Apple executive Adarsh Shastri to Bandana Kumari, a housewife.
Almost all the chiefs of its affiliated organisations have bagged tickets. Kumari, the president of AAP's women's wing is contesting from Shalimar Bagh while Manoj Kumar, head of the party's Scheduled Caste cell will contest from Kondli.
Jarnail Singh, its youth wing chief is the AAP candidate from Tilak Nagar while Praveen Kumar, who is overall in-charge of the affiliated wings, is contesting from Jangpura.