Hans Raj Hans ineligible to contest from North West Delhi: Arvind Kejriwal

Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal claimed on Thursday that the BJP's North West Delhi candidate in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls, Hans Raj Hans, is "ineligible" to fight from a reserved seat, urging the voters not to waste their votes on him. He tagged a tweet of senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Rajendra Pal Gautam, in which he claimed that Hans had deliberately concealed the information that he had converted to Islam recently and was not eligible to contest the polls from the North West Delhi seat which is reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) category.
"Hans Raj Hans is ineligible to fight from a reserved seat. He will finally be declared ineligible," Kejriwal said in a tweet, adding that the voters of North West Delhi should not waste their votes on him.

However, the BJP said the AAP was levelling baseless allegations against its candidate.

"They have lost mental balance sensing their defeat in the Lok Sabha election. With people deserting them, they are trying all sorts of propaganda to remain in the news," Ravindra Gupta, the head of Delhi BJP's media committee for the Lok Sabha polls, said.

Gautam cited news reports according to which Hans converted to Islam sometime ago and claimed that the singer-turned-politician had hidden this information from the Election Commission (EC).

"Since North West Delhi is a reserved seat, it makes him ineligible to contest from there. He deliberately concealed this information from the EC. This is a complete violation of EC rules," he said.

Hans is pitted against the Congress's Rajesh Lilothia and the AAP's Guggan Singh in North West Delhi. Polling for all the seven Lok Sabha constituencies of the national capital will be held on May 12 and the results will be announced on May 23.