Delhi Election 2020: AAP’s Raghav Chadha will have to win the Poorvanchali vote in Rajinder Nagar

• Raghav Chadha, one of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) youngest members, will be contesting the Delhi election from the Rajinder Nagar constituency.
  
• The constituency has a large population of Poorvanchalis — migrants from Bihar, Jharkhand and East Uttar Pradesh.
  
• However, Chadha lost during the Lok Sabha election last year when he contested from the South Delhi parliamentary constituency.
  

Raghav Chadha is among the long line of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidates who unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election but is still among the candidates being put up for the 2020 Delhi Assembly election.

He will be contesting the elections from the Rajinder Nagar — a constituency with a large Poorvanchali population. Poorvanchalis are migrants from Bihar, Jharkhand and Eastern Uttar Pradesh. They comprise nearly 40% of votes in Delhi, something the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) knows.

Although the saffron party is yet to release its official candidate list, sources told The Sunday Guardian it has plans to feature Bhojpuri stars, union ministers and MPs from Poorvanchal to reign in the migrant vote bank.

Switching candidates
The last time BJP was in power in Rajinder Nagar was 2013 under RP Singh. However, during the 2015 election, AAP’s Vijender Garg Vijay took the seat won with 53.39% of the vote share.

This time around, Vijay’s been dropped from AAP’s candidate list altogether. He told reporters, “I do not know the criteria which were used to drop me. I feel I was sacrificed to oblige a big name in the party. CM had asked me not to worry about a ticket.”

Ten things you should know about AAP’s Rajinder Nagar candidate for the Delhi Assembly election 2020, Raghav Chaddha:

1. He is one of the youngest people to get a license to practice as a charted accountant (CA) at the age of 22.
   
2. He studied at Delhi’s Modern School, became a CA, and then went onto get his degree from the London School of Economics (LSE).
   
3. After graduation, Chadha set up his own small wealth management boutique.
   
4. He joined the AAP during the Anna Movement — India Against Corruption — where he met Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Mehra.
   
5. He was one of the few people that helped Kejriwal draft the Delhi Lokpal Bill in 2013.
   
6. He frequently appears on television as AAP’s spokesperson during news debates, most popularly on Times Now. At the age of 26 years, he was the youngest party spokesperson for AAP.
   
7. He comes from a non-political background.
   
8. Chadha was also arrested by the Delhi police in 2015 during protests against the government’s inaction towards the growing number of attacks on churches in the city.
   
9. Chadha was sued for defamation by the late Arun Jaitley for retweeting a post that was defamatory — a case that was later retracted after Kejriwal retracted his statements and apologised.
   
10. In 2019, he contested fro the South Delhi seat during the Lok Sabha election and lost to BJP’s candidate — Ramesh Bidhuri.