Former Delhi minister and senior Congress leader Arvinder Singh Lovely has said people like Gautam Gambhir and Atishi Marlena are fighting the Lok Sabha election as if it is a "political picnic", holding that they do not have either connect with the people or understanding about their hardships.
The BJP has fielded cricketer-turned politician Gambhir while AAP has given ticket to Atishi Marlena from East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency which will witness a triangular electoral battle, with Congress pitting Lovely against them.
Both Gambhir, who joined the BJP earlier this month, and Marlena, a postgraduate from Oxford University and a member of AAP's Political Affairs Committee, are making their electoral debuts.
"The BJP has given ticket to such a person (Gambhir) who has no direct link with politics. He does not have any sense of issues confronting people in trans-Yamuna area," Lovely told PTI in an interview.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, BJP's incumbent MP Maheish Girri had defeated AAP's Rajmohan Gandhi by more than 1.9 lakh votes in East Delhi. Congress's candidate Sandeep Dikshit came a distant third.
Delhi, which sends seven members to the Lower House of Parliament, is going to polls in the sixth phase of Lok Sabha elections on May 12.
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Lovely, who held crucial portfolios like transport, education and urban development, during the Sheila Dikshit-led government, said he was proud that Gambhir played cricket for Delhi and the country, but he "does not have any understanding of politics".
"Also, it is not sure whether he (Gambhir) will give up his other works. He lives in Mumbai. On the other hand, the AAP has brought its candidate (Atishi Marlena) from Oxford University. Both the BJP and AAP candidates are in the electoral fray as if it is a political picnic," Lovely, a former Delhi Congress chief, said.
"Unlike Gambhir and Marlena, I am closely associated with the people from East Delhi for the last 35 years. I know the people and their problems," he said.
Taking a dig at Marlena and Gambhir over their active presence on Twitter, Lovely said, "My fight is against people who are only active on Twitter. I have a direct connect with the grassroots."
"We will work towards it...we will make a good network of roads so that there is decline in vehicular pollution. The projects which were cleared by the then Congress government did not take off yet."
Asked whether he regretted his decision to join the BJP in the 2017 in the run up to the MCD elections, Lovely said, "Absolutely. Absolutely it was a decision that was angrily taken due to my personal reason."
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