Delhi Assembly Election 2020, Rajinder Nagar Profile: AAP upsets sitting MLA, fields Raghav Chadha from seat BJP won 4 times since '93

Rajinder Nagar Profile | With a substantial Other Backward Class and Scheduled Class population — many of whom live in unauthorised colonies and slums — Rajinder Nagar is set to see an interesting fight in the 8 February elections. Rajinder Nagar, which is part of the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, will get its new MLA on 11 February. A Punjabi-dominated area, Rajinder Nagar will see a triangular contest as AAP has replaced its sitting MLA Vijender Garg to field a more popular face, Raghav Chadha, who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi seat. Chadha, a Punabi will take on veteran BJP leader from the Sikh community, RP Singh and Congress' student leader from Jat community, Rocky Tuseed, who was president of Delhi University Students' Union in 2017 and ended the five-year-drought for the Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India.

Here is a brief profile of Rajinder Nagar constituency:

Constituency Name: Rajinder Nagar
Constituency Number: 39
District Name: Central Delhi
Total Electors: 182530
Female Electors: 78227
Male Electors: 104294
Third Gender: 9
Reserved: No

Results in previous elections: Sitting AAP MLA Vijender Garg had won the 2015 Delhi polls with over 54 percent votes and 20,000 votes against BJP veteran RP Singh in 2015. But the party has replaced him with Chadha, perhaps sensing the need to field a stronger candidate. Garg, meanwhile, let his grouse known and claimed that he was "sacrificed to oblige a big name in the party"

Before Garg claimed the seat for AAP in 2015, it was primarily a BJP bastion. Singh had won the seat in 2013 elections, before losing out to Chadha in mid-term polls. Before him, Puran Chand Yogi, a veteran BJP leader, represented the seat from 1993 until his demise in 2008. Congress has held this seat only once in 2008 when Rama Kant Goswami won the seat after BJP fielded Yogi's wife Asha at the last minute, after he committed suicide.

Demographics: Largely an upper-middle-class locality, Rajinder Nagar is dominated by Punjabis as thousands of displaced families were settled in this area after the Partition. Rajinder Nagar also has a significant population of SC and OBC voters. SCs and OBCs together form at least 40 percent of the population in the constituency, however, various caste dynamics within themselves has kept the community from voting as a cohesive unit. In fact, this is one of the constituencies the Mayawati-led BSP has been trying to win since 2008. Rajinder Nagar also has a Jat-dominated pocket, Dasghara and a Yadav-dominated locality, Todapur within its bounds. However, over the years, it has seen a sharp demographic shift . In recent years, the demography in areas such as Inderpuri, Naraina Vihar and Pandav Nagar has again changed to with a substantial number of Purvanchali migrants moving to the area.

January 30, 2020 at 11:39AM