AAP's Sunil Digamber Kulkarni to fight against Narendra Modi in Vadodara

NEW DELHI: Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday declared party worker Sunil Digamber Kulkarni as its candidate from the Vadodara constituency. Kulkarni will be pitted against BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and Congress's Madhusudan Mistry.

Kulkarni, who is 41 years of age, is a mechanical engineer. He has been associated with AAP right from its inception.

Narendra Modi is fighting the Lok Sabha polls from two seats; Vadodara and Varanasi. While AAP has decided to field Kulkarni against Modi in Vadodara, party chief Kejriwal is fighting against the BJP PM candidate in Varanasi.

The announcement comes on a day when AAP candidate from Rae Bareli Justice Fakhruddin pulled out from the race at the last moment forcing the party to field a new face, just a day ahead of the last date of filing nominations.

AAP worker and social activist Archana Srivastav will now contest against Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Rae Bareli goes to poll on April 30.

Srivastav, who has been associated with the party since its inception, was initially among the front runners for this seat, but Fakhruddin's credentials tipped the balance in his favour. A judge of the Madhya Pradesh High court for 12 years, Justice Fakhruddin was also its acting chief Justice for some time. He has also been a member of the Bar Council of MP for almost 20 years His candidature was announced on April 3, the same day Gandhi filed her nomination from this seat.

"He realized that his name was enrolled in the Jabalpur voters' list as well as in the Jungpura constituency in New Delhi. Although he applied to the EC to delete his name from the Jabalpur list, he was informed that this cannot be done once the filing of nominations has begun. Justice Fakhruddin felt that this could create problems for his campaign and could also be used to malign the party. We tried assuring him that he was not in the wrong as he had applied for deletion, but he did not want to leave anything to chance and withdrew his name," said a senior AAP leader, who did not wish to be identified.