Kanhaiya Kumar, Udit Raj among 3 Congress candidates for Delhi

New Delhi: The Congress Sunday announced its candidates for three Lok Sabha constituencies in Delhi, where it is contesting in alliance with AAP, fielding Kanhaiya Kumar from the North East Delhi seat and Udit Raj from North West Delhi.

The party also named JP Agarwal as its candidate for the Chandni Chowk seat.

The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are contesting the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi under a 3:4 seat-sharing agreement, with the AAP contesting on four seats and the Congress on three.

Kanhaiya Kumar is a former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president who came to the limelight following his arrest in 2016 for allegedly raising "anti-national" slogans on the university campus.

He was released later after an investigation revealed that the slogans were raised by outsiders.

Kumar is now the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the students' wing of the Congress. He had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Begusarai on a CPI ticket but lost to the BJP's Giriraj Singh.

Kumar will be contesting against the BJP's two-time MP from the North East Delhi constituency and Bhojpuri singer-turned-politician Manoj Tiwari.

JP Agarwal is a veteran leader of the Congress who had won from the Chandni Chowk constituency in 1984, 1989, and 1996. The party has fielded him from the same seat.

Udit Raj is a former MP from the North West Delhi-SC seat. He had won from the constituency in 2014 as a BJP candidate. Raj joined Congress in 2019 after being denied a ticket by the saffron party.

Delhi will go to polls on May 25 and the counting of votes will take place on June 4.