The battle of the turncoats

A Congress bastion from the late 1990s to 2015, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the Gandhi Nagar assembly constituency election in 2020 only for the second time.

- Karn Pratap Singh

NEW DELHI: Seeking a consecutive win, the BJP is fielding 56-year-old Arvinder Singh Lovely, the former Delhi Congress head, against the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP's) 60-year-old candidate Naveen Chaudhary, popularly known as Deepu Chaudhary, and Congress's 52-year-old candidate Kamal Arora, a businessman-turned-politician who was associated with the Congress for 16 years before joining the AAP in 2012 and returning for this year's polls.

The constituency, synonymous with its namesake market, is one of the country's biggest readymade garment hubs, according to traders, who estimate that besides 25,000 shops and showrooms, neighbourhoods in the constituency host several manufacturing hubs that generate a daily turnover of crores of rupees.

The main source of livelihood for most people here is business, rental income, and daily wages.

According to the Election Commission's final electoral rolls, the constituency has 172,322 voters, comprising 94,494 male, 77,818 female, and 10 third-gender electors.

The number of electors was 182,831 in 2020, implying a reduction of 10,500 voters this time around.

The contestants

The BJP's Arvinder Singh Lovely is a prominent Sikh leader and is considered the favourite to win the seat, according to locals, but many also said he has lost electors' trust due to switching sides, given that he held important portfolios in the Sheila Dikshit-led government in the Capital.

Lovely joined the BJP last May, within a week of quitting as the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief.