The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Kapil Mishra, who chanted “desh ke gaddaron ko″ at a pro-CAA rally in December, from Model Town in the upcoming Delhi elections 2020. He will contest against Aam Aadmi Party’s Akhilesh Pati Tripathi and Congress’s Akansha Ola.
Mishra led a march in Delhi on 20 December in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a video of him shouting the inflammatory slogan surfaced on social media.
Though the Delhi BJP had distanced itself from Mishra’s march and the resultant controversy at the time, several party leaders were later caught on camera encouraging the same slogan. BJP leader and Union minister Anurag Thakur encouraged the it at an election rally in Delhi, after which he was banned for 72 hours from campaigning in the national capital.
The Election Commission had also banned Mishra from campaigning for 48 hours on 25 January after his communal tweets.
Mishra was the Water Resource Minister in the Arvind Kejriwal government, but he was sacked from the Cabinet in May 2017. Later, he was also suspended from the party’s primary membership after accusing the Chief Minister and AAP leader Satyendra Jain of corruption.
He joined the BJP in August last year. He was disqualified as an MLA under the anti-defection law after campaigning for the BJP during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Mishra was elected from the Karawalnagar seat in the last election.
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