Arvind Kejriwal takes Sheila Dikshit ‘head-on’,will contest polls from her turf

“The workers and members of the AAP have decided that I will contest against the Delhi CM. If Sheila Dikshit later decides to contest from another seat,I will also contest from there,” Kejriwal said.

The AAP leader also asked Delhi BJP president Vijay Goel to fight elections from the same constituency. “I would also like to challenge Mr Vijay Goel to contest the same election with me from the same constituency. We are the main contenders in the upcoming elections,” Kejriwal said.

He said the AAP stood a better chance of defeating Congress than BJP,which has not made any inroads in Delhi for the past 15 years.

After two consecutive wins from the Gole Market constituency in 1998 and 2003,Dikshit shifted to the New Delhi constituency when Gole Market became defunct in the delimitation exercise. In 2008,Dikshit defeated BJP’s Vijay Jolly.

According to AAP,BJP had deliberately fielded “weak” candidates against Dikshit in the previous elections.

“It is like playing an already fixed match. Everybody knows that BJP fields weak candidates against Dikshit. But this time it will be a real fight between leaders. Dikshit will have competition,” a senior AAP leader said.

Lawyer and AAP leader Prashant Bhushan supported Kejriwal’s decision. “The leader,who has become ‘symbol’ of the current political system — Dikshit — should be taken head-on in her own constituency. We want to change the political system of the country,so we will field Kejriwal opposite the personality,who is symbol of this political system,” Bhushan said.

Since its inception,AAP has hit out at Dikshit on core issues of water and power. Claiming that the private electricity distribution companies were “cheating” consumers with inflated bills,Kejriwal had launched a civil disobedience movement asking consumers not to pay electricity bills.

The AAP leader had also completed a 13-day fast against high power and water bills in Sundar Nagri in East Delhi. The AAP collected close to 10.5 lakh letters of support against inflated bills from consumers and delivered them to Dikshit,who forwarded the letters to Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission for action.