Former deputy chief minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, has switched seats from East Delhi’s Patparganj to South Delhi’s Jangpura for the Assembly polls next year.

Sisodia is AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal’s closest lieutenant and is credited with improving the school infrastructure in the capital — a key component of the AAP’s “Delhi model” of governance.

However, the rise of the BJP in East Delhi after the communal riots in 2020 is likely to have compelled Sisodia to relinquish the seat he had represented for three terms and move to a greener pasture on the west bank of the Yamuna.

Patparganj and Jangpura were among the 20 seats for which the AAP announced its candidates on Monday. Civil service exam coach Avadh Ojha, who recently joined the AAP, has been fielded from Patparganj.

“I consider myself a teacher, not a politician. Patparganj was not just an Assembly constituency for me, but the heart of the education revolution in Delhi. When Avadh Ojhaji joined the party and there was a demand to field him in the elections, all I could think was that there could be no better seat than Patparganj for a teacher,” Sisodia posted on X.

In the last Assembly elections, the AAP had won 62 of the 70 seats and the BJP the rest.

So far, the AAP has declared candidates for 31 seats, including those that the BJP holds. Only MLAs Sisodia and deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla have been repeated but from seats other than the ones they currently represent.

In 2020, Sisodia's victory margin from Patparganj saw a decline. He won by a margin of a shade over 2 per cent against the BJP’s Ravinder Negi.

The BJP’s gains in the 2020 polls came mostly in North East and East Delhi. The riots took place soon after and, according to AAP sources, the BJP has consolidated its position since.

In the last Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had led in the Patparganj segment and the party holds three of the four municipal wards that fall within the seat.

Jangpura, on the other hand, is seen as an AAP stronghold because of the party’s strident activism in favour of slum dwellers here.