The BJP officially named former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as their Chief Ministerial candidate in Delhi. (Press Trust of India)
The BJP's Kiran Bedi will take on Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party in the big battle for the post of Delhi chief minister in next month's assembly election.
The BJP's announcement late on Monday night of Ms Bedi's name as presumptive chief minister is a departure from recent state elections when the party did not project a local leader and chose to bank on what it called the "Modi wave" spilling over from the national elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi led his party to a big win.
Critics say Ms Bedi is being used to shield the PM if the party fails to perform well in the Delhi elections. "It shows the BJP's leadership and talent crisis... she is just a scapegoat," said AAP leader Ashutosh.
Others see the rare decision to project a person who just joined the party and also has no roots in the BJP's ideological mentor the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS as a bold one, designed to demonstrate to voters that the party is breaking with tradition to try a new way of doing things. Ms Bedi, 65, made her political debut last week when she joined the BJP.
Top BJP leaders told NDTV said that by picking Ms Bedi, the party is accepting the changed character of the Delhi voter. Delhi, they said, doesn't vote on the lines of old equations anymore where a party could win a seat by fielding a candidate who brought together a few castes.
"Arvind Kejriwal has displayed that voters want a new kind of candidate with a more modern outlook," a BJP leader said.
Dr Harshvardhan, now Union minister, who was the BJP's candidate for chief minister in the elections held in December 2013, said, "The BJP has weighed all these issues. In Modi's and Amit Shah's assessment the old combinations do not work."
He said the BJP wanted to counter Arvind Kejriwal's image with someone with a similar background. Ms Bedi and Mr Kejriwal were in 2011, the closest advisers to Gandhian activist Anna Hazare during his campaign for more accountability and transparency through new anti-graft laws.
Ms Bedi will contest from the Krishnanagar constituency in east Delhi, which was Dr Harsh Vardhan's assembly constituency before he contested and won in the national elections last year. It is seen as a safe seat for the BJP. Party president Amit Shah said "this is a traditional BJP seat being given to Ms Bedi to free her to campaign all across the capital."
Though the BJP had indicated that Dr Harshvardhan was not in the race for chief minister this time by inducting him into the Union Cabinet, he was recently divested of the key Health portfolio and given Science and Technology instead, leading to speculation that he was being given a lighter charge so that he could shift focus back to Delhi.