East Delhi is among the country’s larger and thickly populated Lok Sabha constituencies, which comprises parts of the National Capital on either side of the river Yamuna. There are large concentrations of residents in areas like Seelampur, Shahdara, Gandhi Nagar, Preet Vihar, among others. Okhla, which has pockets of residential complexes, is an industrial area as well.
In 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominated cricketer Gautam Gambhir who defeated the then Congress candidate Arvinder Singh Lovely by over 3.9 lakh votes. Atishi Marlena of AAP was the second runner-up with less than 2.2 lakh votes. Lovely has since joined the BJP and will not contest this time, while Gambhir has expressed his inability to continue his innings at the hustings. Atishi is now a member in the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government’s cabinet.
The contest in the 2024 Lok Sabha election is all set to be a direct fight between BJP’s Harsh Malhotra and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Kuldeep Kumar who is supported by the Congress.
This is Malhotra’s maiden attempt to be a Member of Parliament. He obtained a BSc degree from Hansraj College and LLB from the University of Delhi in 1987. He is one of the three general secretaries of the BJP's Delhi unit.
The 58-year-old is from the Punjabi community, which has a fairly large presence in the East Delhi constituency. He was earlier the mayor of the then East Delhi Municipal Corporation and has also served as president of the Delhi Printers Association and joint secretary of the All India Federation of Master Printers.
Malhotra is also the president of a non-government organisation (NGO), called Dadhichi Deh Dan Samiti, which works in spreading awareness on organ donation.
He will face Aam Aadmi Party's Kuldeep Kumar, who is currently a legislator from the Kondli Assembly seat, among the 10 segments of East Delhi Parliamentary seat.
Kumar (30) comes from a humble background, where his father worked as a sanitation worker with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). Though he enrolled in the Shyam Lal College to study History, he dropped out of college and took to social activism. When just 18 years old, he led a movement named after Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, focused on raising awareness on education among youth from the Scheduled Caste (SC).
In 2012, he joined AAP and worked as a volunteer in the early days of the party. Five years later, he contested the municipal election in Delhi for the AAP from Kalyanpuri ward in East Delhi and was elected corporator. He was later appointed vice president of the party’s Delhi Unit.
In 2019, there were 20,39,302 electors in East Delhi, out of which 12,57,821 or 61.68% of the total registered voters had cast their votes. The assembly segments of the Parliamentary seat comprise Jangpura, Okhla, Trilokpuri (SC), Kondli (SC), Patparganj, Laxmi Nagar, Vishwas Nagar, Krishna Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, and Shahdara.
Three of the assembly seats – namely Laxmi Nagar, Vishwas Nagar, and Gandhi Nagar – went to the BJP in the 2020 Delhi assembly election while the rest was won by AAP candidates.
While the result of the first Lok Sabha election held in East Delhi constituency went in favour of the Bharatitya Jana Sangh, Congress leader H. K. L. Bhagat won here in 1971, 1980, 1984, and 1989. However, in 1977, during the anti-Indira wave, the seat went to the Janata Party.
Since 1991, the BJP has been winning from this constituency, except 2004 and 2009, when Congress candidate Sandeep Dikshit was victorious. But in 2014, Dikshit was the second runner-up behind the winner Maheish Girri of the BJP and runner-up Rajmohan Gandhi of AAP.
In 2024, East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency is all set to witness a face off between two first-time contestants for a berth in the Lower House of Parliament.
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