Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh on Sunday took a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri retracted his statement naming Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari as the party’s chief ministerial face for the upcoming Assembly elections.

The 2020 polls are expected to be held early in the year.

“The residents of Delhi want to know the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate against [Chief Minister] Arvind Kejriwal],” Singh tweeted. “You named Manoj Tiwari but left the battlefield within two hours. Has the BJP given a walkover to Kejriwal in the elections?”

Advertisement

Earlier, Puri had said at an event: “We are going to fight the elections under the leadership of Manoj Tiwari, and we will leave no stone unturned to make him the chief minister.”

However, the minister later clarified that the BJP has not named its chief ministerial candidate for Delhi. “The BJP is poised for victory in Delhi,” Puri said in a tweet. “My statement meant that the BJP would win the forthcoming elections with huge votes under his [Tiwari’s] leadership.”

Commenting on Puri’s initial statement, Sanjay Singh had claimed that AAP would get even more seats in the upcoming Assembly elections than it did in 2015. The party had won 67 out of 70 seats in the 2015 Delhi elections.

“BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] has declared Manoj Tiwari as their CM [chief minister] face, now we will break even our 2015 record,” Sanjay Singh had tweeted.