On 27 Apr, BJP President JP Nadda presided over a special event in the national capital where 1,000-1,500 members of the Sikh community, along with those from the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, joined the party. On 28 Apr, Delhi INC chief Arvinder Singh Lovely announced his resignation from his post over the INC alliance with AAP and issues with ticket distribution in seven Delhi seats (SDW Vol. 2 Issue 18, Updates). On 4 May Lovely formally joined back the BJP from the INC. On 1 May, two other senior leaders — Neeraj Basoya and Naseeb Singh — also quit INC. The leaders blamed the INC-AAP alliance for their resignation. The Delhi INC now faces a challenge in asserting its place in the city's Sikh community. Before the 1984 Sikh genocide, Sikh voters used to vote for INC. But after 1984 because several INC leaders were involved in the genocide, the party took years to woo the Sikh vote bloc in Sikh-dominated West Delhi and significant pockets of East and South Delhi. In 1998, then Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit appointed a prominent Sikh and former Mayor of Delhi Mahinder Singh Saathi as finance minister. While Sikhs have joined the BJP recently, regardless of the present-day BJP's top leadership sending out messages of solidarity with the Sikhs, the community remains skeptical, especially after the anti-Sikh rhetoric that echoed during the farmers' protest. The overall Sikh voter population in Delhi is estimated to be 3% of the electorate, while West Delhi alone has the largest concentration of approximately 8%.
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