New Delhi: The Delhi unit of BJP has begun internal deliberations for candidate selection after completing constituency-wise surveys to assess potential nominees, party sources said.
"After evaluating five to six prospective candidates in each constituency, the organisation is now working on narrowing down the selection to two or three faces," a senior party functionary said.
He said the results of most of the surveys had arrived. The decision on candidate selection lies with the party's parliamentary board, based on the feedback of local units and the surveys.
The board has Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party national president JP Nadda, home minister Amit Shah, national general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh and other senior functionaries. It will make decisions on tickets closer to the elections.
A senior BJP functionary said that during the surveys, the party came up with new names that were initially not on the radar.
The five-year term of the Assembly will conclude in 2025. Elections for the 70 seats are due in Feb.
AAP won 67 seats in 2015 and 62 in 2020. The upcoming election, however, presents significant hurdles before AAP. BJP has targeted the party over Yamuna cleaning, the condition of roads, and the renovation of the CM's official residence at Flag Staff Road.
Sources in the party said that some of the people who switched sides from other parties in recent times are likely to secure a party's ticket. Among the high-profile names who joined the BJP recently are former minister Kailash Gahlot, then sitting MLA Kartar Singh Tanwar from Chhatarpur, former Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely, and former minister in Delhi govt Raaj Kumar Anand.
Sources mentioned that Gahlot wanted a ticket from Najafgarh, Lovely from Gandhi Nagar, Tanwar from Chhatarpur and Anand from Patel Nagar.
AAP last week announced its first list of candidates. The list included several former BJP and Congress leaders who have recently joined AAP. Brahm Singh Tanwar, Anil Jha and BB Tyagi, who had switched from BJP, along with Chaudhry Zubair Ahmad, Veer Dhingan, and Sumesh Shokeen who had come from Congress, have been given tickets.
A BJP functionary, however, said that their ticket declaration would be done closer to the polls. "A section in the party wants tickets to be declared early, as it happened in Lok Sabha polls, but such decisions are taken by the central leadership. We communicate the sentiments of the cadre, but these things are the central leadership's domain," he said.
Even though BJP has not fared well in the past two elections, it has swept all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi for the past three terms: 2014, 2019, and 2024.