Like the elections in Mumbai, the polls in Delhi come with their own star power. In East Delhi, former cricketer Gautam Gambhir announced his last minute candidature for BJP, after joining the party barely a month back.
Calling himself an East Delhi boy, his campaign says that his opponents — Atishi from AAP and former Delhi minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely — are ‘political tourists’.
Gambhir’s platform right now is to keep the promises that BJP has made to the constituency like shutting down the Ghazipur landfill which is an eyesore and a disease dump, and providing access to clean drinking water.
Manoj Tiwari, in North East Delhi, is another BJP candidate with star power to back him up. He’s already won the election once, in 2014, by a margin of almost 100,000 votes.
But it might not be so easy for this Bhojpuri actor and singer to win this time around. He’s pitted against Sheila Dikshit, the Congress candidate who was the Delhi Chief Minister for 15 years running, until AAP came to power.
The Congress party brought in its own sporting star Vijender Singh, to field the seat from South Delhi against BJP’s incumbent, Ramesh Bidhuri and AAP’s Raghav Chadha.
AAP is the only party which isn’t fielding stars, remaining true to its name-aam aadmi (common man’s) party.