Over 20 supporters of BJP leader Sarita Choudhary protested at the party's state headquarters here after she was not fielded for the Dec 4 Delhi assembly polls.
Choudhary, mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, was considered a strong contender for a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket from the Mehrauli assembly constituency. However, the BJP decided to field Parvesh Verma from there.
Disgruntled party workers said Verma is an "outsider". "This is suicidal. Nobody knows who Parvesh is in our area. The party is set to lose the seat," said an agitated Vijay Singh, a Mehrauli resident and Choudhary's supporter.
"We have been working here for the past five years and this is what we get for our hard work," he said.
Parvesh Verma, son of former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma who was killed in a car crash in June 2007, was expected to contest from Mundka, once the bastion of his father.
Waving black flags, party workers stormed the conference room in the party office just as a press conference there concluded. They broke a couple of chairs, raised slogans and climbed atop tables.
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State party chief Vijay Goel, Vijender Gupta and senior leader V.K. Malhotra fled the scene as the party's Delhi chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan was heckled.
Harsh Vardhan attempted to calm down the irate mob and requested them to stop the sloganeering.
"Is this the culture of our party?" asked Harsh Vardhan but his words failed to have any effect, and he was escorted out by security guards.
Interestingly, minutes before the protest, both Harsh Vardhan and Goel admitted that some party workers were unhappy with the allocation of tickets but assured "everything was under control".
The party Wednesday declared the list of candidates for 62 seats, of which four will be contested by its old ally, Shiromani Akali Dal. The names of the remaining eight candidates are expected Friday.