The Congress on Thursday released its first list of 21 candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections likely to be held early next year.

The party’s Delhi chief, Devender Yadav, has been named the candidate from Badli, while the former president of the unit, Anil Kumar, will contest from Patparganj.

Sandeep Dikshit, son of three-time Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, has been fielded from New Delhi. Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal currently represents the constituency.

The Assembly elections in Delhi are expected to take place in or before February. The Election Commission has not announced the schedule yet.

The Congress has fielded former minister Haroon Yusuf from Ballimaran. Other names include party leaders Aruna Kumari from Narela, Abhishek Dutt from Kasturba Nagar and Ragini Nayak from Wazirpur.

Former Lok Sabha MP Jai Prakash Agarwal’s son Mudit Agarwal has been given a ticket from Chandni Chowk.

The Aam Aadmi Party and Congress, despite being part of the Opposition INDIA bloc at the national level, have repeatedly said that they would contest the Assembly elections in Delhi alone.

The Aam Aadmi Party has already released two lists of candidates for the election, while the Bharatiya Janata Party is yet to release any list.

The Aam Aadmi Party and Congress had fought the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Delhi in an alliance and lost all seven seats in the national capital to the BJP.

“The experience of the 2013 Assembly poll and the Lok Sabha election held earlier this year shows that the Congress joins hands with Aam Aadmi Party at the last minute,” BJP leader Praveen Shankar Kapoor said on Thursday in response to the list released by the Congress, The Hindu reported.

“We hope the Congress will contest the election and won’t run away by forming an alliance with Aam Aadmi Party,” he added.

In 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party won 62 of the 70 seats in the Assembly elections. The BJP won the remaining eight seats.