Delhi: Congress yet to name candidates

If zeroing in on a suitable candidate for the Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha seat is proving to be a major headache for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for the opposition Congress party all seven seats are a major problem.

The reluctance of its provincial ministers to contest the general elections in Delhi has forced the Congress party to delay naming its candidates in the national capital giving a head start to the rival BJP that has announced candidates for all but the Chandni Chowk seat.

For the Congress, the choice is to either revert to old disgraced leaders or to pick up young untested candidates.

Interestingly, the Congress party won the last two elections in the metropolis in style, thrashing the BJP badly in the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections in 2002 followed by the party winning over two-thirds majority in the December 2003 Delhi state assembly polls.

Senior national leaders of the Congress party set the trend with both Working Committee member Dr. Manmohan Singh and national general secretary Ambika Soni refusing to contest the South Delhi seat.

In a bid to continue with its dominance on Delhi's politics after forfeiting all seven parliamentary seats to the BJP, the Congress party subsequently zeroed down on Delhi Finance Minister Dr.

Ashok Kumar Walia for the East Delhi seat, Transport Minister Harun Yusuf for the Chandni Chowk seat, Speaker Ajay Maken from South Delhi seat and its state unit president Chaudhary Prem Singh from the Karol Bagh seat reserved for the scheduled (lower) caste.

However, all of them have backed out, expressing their reluctance citing one reason or the other, despite the fact that Walia, Yusuf and Maken have in the past contested for Lok Sabha without any luck.

"Assembly polls were contested on the basis of our government's good performance in the state. Parliamentary elections are altogether different since the issue will be good governance or lack of it of the BJP-led federal government. None of us are keen on giving up comfortable ministerial posts to bite the dust or sit in the opposition," a minister explained.

The only certainty is fielding former federal minister Jagdish Tytler from his Old Delhi Sadar seat from where he has won and lost three times each.

Given a chance, neither Jai Prakash Aggarwal nor Sajjan Kumar would mind contesting their old Chandni Chowk and Outer Delhi seats. The party's leadership have reservations about fielding Aggarwal considering he lost the seat both in 1998 and 1999 elections, fielding Sajjan Kumar is fraught with the risk of offending Sikh voters of Delhi and elsewhere, since he is one of the prime accused of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the city.

Besides Tytler, also an accused in the 1984 riots but cleared by the court unlike Kumar, the only certainty at the moment appears to be fielding Dr. Karan Singh against federal Tourism Minister Jagmohan from New Delhi seat.