BJP’s Lovely, Chauhan to campaign in strongholds

Arvinder Singh Lovely will be campaigning for the party in trans-Yamuna areas and seek votes in Sikh-dominated areas of Tilak Nagar, Rajouri Garden and Hari Nagar. Raj Kumar Chauhan will be campaigning in the North West Delhi Lok Sabha constituency and hold public meetings in Dalit-dominated pockets in the Capital.

The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday said Arvinder Singh Lovely, the former Delhi Congress chief who joined the BJP on May 4, will be campaigning for the party in trans-Yamuna areas and seek votes in Sikh-dominated areas of Tilak Nagar, Rajouri Garden and Hari Nagar.

Arvinder Singh Lovely and Raj Kumar Chauhan joined the BJP from the Congress on May 4. (HT File Photo)

Former minister and Congress leader Raj Kumar Chauhan, who also joined the BJP along with Lovely, will be campaigning in the North West Delhi Lok Sabha constituency and hold public meetings in Dalit-dominated pockets in the Capital, BJP leaders said.

“Arvinder Singh Lovely and Raj Kumar Chauhan will be campaigning in different areas of the Capital, with demands for their presence coming from some candidates. They have served as ministers in Delhi, have rich political experience and have rapport with different sections,” Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said in a media interaction at the Delhi BJP office.

A week after resigning from the post of Delhi Congress chief, Arvinder Singh Lovely rejoined the BJP along with four other Congress leaders, including ex-Delhi minister Raj Kumar Chauhan, former MLAs Naseeb Singh and Neeraj Basyoa, and Amit Malik, on May 4.

All five leaders interacted with the media on the occasion.

“I left the Congress because it is not the same Congress it was during Indira Gandhi’s time. Now, the Congress has changed and its ideology has shifted from a nationalist tone to the ‘tukde-tukde’ image. I am a worker of the BJP and will remain in the BJP till I do politics. I will be handling the tasks the party assigns to me,” said Lovely.

“I will quit politics but I will not quit the BJP,” he said.

This is Lovely’s second stint with the BJP. He joined the BJP in April 2017, but returned to the Congress in February 2018, saying “he was an ideological misfit within the party.”