Nupur Sharma, a former Delhi University Students Union president, was associated with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the BJP.
New Delhi: The BJP Monday fielded a young party member Nupur Sharma to take on Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi seat in Delhi assembly polls. The party’s first list of 62 candidates included new entrants Kiran Bedi, Krishna Tirath and Vinod Kumar Binny.
The list includes former union minister and Congress leader Tirath from Patel Nagar. Tirath got the BJP ticket on the day she declared her association with the party, creating a record of sorts.
Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi, a former IPS officer, has been fielded from Krishna Nagar, a “traditional” seat of the party. Bedi joined the BJP Jan 15.
Binny, a former AAP MLA, will contest from Patparganj. He joined the BJP Sunday.
Briefing reporters after the meeting of party’s central election committee and parliamentary board, BJP leader and union minister J.P. Nadda said that party’s Delhi unit chief Satish Upadhyay will not contest the polls.
“He has a huge responsibility. He will not be fighting the election,” Nadda said.
Those fielded by the BJP also included Vijendra Gupta from Rohini, Jagdish Mukhi from Janakpuri, Karan Singh Tanwar from Delhi Cantonment and M.S. Dhir from Jangpura.
Dhir is a former speaker of Delhi assembly and had won the 2013 election as an AAP nominee.
Elections to 70-member Delhi assembly will be held Feb 7.
Nupur Sharma is a former Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) president. She was associated with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP. Her name was being considered by the party against Kejriwal even in 2013 elections.
On November 6, 2008, when she was DUSU president, she led an ABVP mob into an arts faculty seminar room in the university, where some students and teachers groups had invited Zakir Hussain College professor and former accused in the Parliament attack case SAR Geelani to participate in a seminar titled ‘Communalism, Fascism and Democracy: Rhetoric and Reality’.
While a number of them vandalised the venue, an ABVP activist spat on Geelani’s face. Sharma herself was seen heckling Geelani.
Late that night, she was on a popular television show where the anchor asked whether she, a student, would apologise to Geelani, the professor.
“I am not going to apologise… What for?” she quipped. Later in the show, she ventured, “I’ll take a stand. The whole country should spit at him. Who invited him to the university to speak on terrorism?”
(With inputs from IANS)