AAP challenger looks to Muslims to break into Lovely citadel Gandhi Nagar

Gandhi Nagar, a traditional Congress bastion, is among the constituencies that the Congress, striving to restore the faith of its voters after it won only eight seats in the 2013 Assembly elections, is least worried about.

In 2013, Lovely chalked up 48,897 votes and won the seat by a margin of 16,961 votes over BJP’s Ramesh Chand Jain. Bajpai, who won about 17,000 votes, had finished third. But he is quick to undermine the Lovely’s popularity in Gandhi Nagar. “This time our contest will be only against the BJP,” he said.

Bajpai, who was a member of the Congress party from 1984 to 2004, admits that he has an axe to grind with Lovely. “In 1998, I was denied the chance to contest Assembly election by the Congress. They picked Lovely,” he said.

Bajpai said he met AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in 2013 and was impressed by his ideology. “The AAP was certain about my ability because they know that I have worked in this constituency. My name was on the first list announced by the AAP,” he said.

“Gandhi Nagar houses a number of Partition refugees. It is the business district. The maximum number of residents are Muslims followed by Brahmins, scheduled castes, Punjabis, Jains and Vaishyas,” Bajpai said.

He chided the Congress for not doing enough for the Muslims whose support it had thrived on. “Gandhi Nagar has had a Congress MLA for 15 years because the Muslims voted for him. But there isn’t a single Urdu teacher in nearly 29 schools in the constituency,” he said.
“Gandhi Nagar is home to Asia’s largest textile market and in the entire market area, there isn’t a single toilet for women. There was a rape of minor here in 2013. But what measures have been taken for women’s safety? At least there should be CCTV cameras outside girls’ schools which the AAP has promised,” he said.

Reacting to allegations made by Bajpai, Lovely said the “shortcomings” that the AAP is pointing out are not even the subject of an MLA’s duties. “The AAP candidate is so immature that he doesn’t even know that women’s security, sanitation and parking are subjects of the Centre and the MCDs.”