Akali Dal likely to announce four Delhi candidates today

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 19

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Sunday deferred the announcement of name of its four candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections slated for February 8. A formal announcement is expected tomorrow. The last date for filing nominations is January 21.

A decision was expected tonight, but it awaits a formal nod from party President Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is away to Amritsar.

Sources within the party said the SAD had four seats and the likely candidates were Manjinder Singh Sirsa from Rajouri Garden, Amarjit Singh from Hari Nagar, Harmeet Singh Kalka from Kalkaji and Gurmeet Singh Shunty from Shahdra. The names have been finalised by a committee. Sirsa is sitting MLA is also the president of the powerful Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC). Amarjit Singh is a councillor and Kalka is the president of the SAD’s Delhi unit. Shunty has rejoined the SAD after having left in December 2014.

During the 2015 Assembly polls, two Akali candidates — Harmeet Singh from Kalkaji and Jitender Pal from Shahdara — had contested on the BJP symbol (lotus).

Other two SAD candidates — Manjinder Singh Sirsa from Rajouri Garden and Avtar Singh from Harinagar — had contested on their party’s symbol (weighing scale). In the 2015 Assembly polls, it lost all four. In the April 2017 bypoll, Sirsa, as joint candidate of the SAD and the BJP, won on a BJP ticket from Rajouri Garden that had fallen vacant as AAP’s Jarnail Singh had resigned to unsuccessfully contest the Lambi seat in Punjab during the February 2017 Assembly elections.