Kapil Mishra, Vijender Gupta among 57 in BJP's 1st Delhi list

The BJP on Friday released its first list of candidates for the February 8 Delhi Assembly elections, comprising 57 names including senior leader Vijender Gupta who will fight from Rohini and AAP rebel Kapil Mishra from Model Town.

Gupta was among the BJP's three winning candidates in the 2015 elections, while Mishra is a former AAP minister who rebelled and joined the BJP.

BJP's national Secretary R.P. Singh is being fielded from Rajinder Nagar, while Shikha Rai is the candidate from the upscale Greater Kailash. From Tughlaqabad, the candidate is Vikram Bidhuri, a relative of BJP's South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri.

The list was released by BJP's Delhi Chief Manoj Tiwari who claimed that his party is confident of a win in the state, where it has been out of power since 1998.

On being asked about the remaining 13 candidates, Tiwari said the party will come up with the names "soon.".

The list comes after the BJP's Central Election Committee meeting which started on late on Thursday and ended a little after 11 p.m.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister and BJP President Amit Shah, working President J.P. Nadda, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Thawarchand Gehlot and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan among others. In fact, PM Modi left the BJP headquarters, where the meeting was taking place, only around 11.40 p.m.

Earlier this week, Amit Shah held a series of BJP core group meeting at his residence, some of which ran till 3 a.m. to shortlist the candidates. Nadda, General Secretary (Organisation) B.L. Santosh, party's Delhi in-charge Prakash Javadekar, Manoj Tiwari among others were present in that meeting.

Delhi will go to poll on February 8 and the results will be out on February 11.

( With inputs from IANS )