advertisement
Come February, 1.43 crore voters in Delhi will decide who their next chief minister will be. According to the Election Commission, polls to all 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly will be held on 8 February, followed by counting of votes on 11 February.
But despite its small size and a government with limited powers, why is Delhi such a prestige battle for political parties? Before we get to that, let’s understand whose prestige is at stake.
Elections to Delhi Assembly have largely been a two-cornered fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress. While the BJP formed the first government under the leadership of Madan Lal Khurana in 1993, it was the Congress’ Sheila Dikshit who became chief minister – first in 1998 – and remained in power for the next two terms in 2003 and 2008.
However, the UT’s political landscape underwent a massive change in 2013, with the advent of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, popularly known as AAP. After a brief stint of 49 days in 2013, Kejriwal’s AAP returned to power in the 2015 Assembly elections and has been in power since.
The BJP’s Delhi unit headed by MP Manoj Tiwari has apparently “decided to go into the elections without naming any prospective CM candidate,” a well-placed source told The Quint.
The Congress, however, faces a leadership vacuum in Delhi, in the absence of three-time chief minister, the late Sheila Dikshit – a first in nearly 20 years. It has recently named Subhash Chopra as the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee President, whose popularity is nowhere compared to the late Dikshit.
In Delhi, elections are often held on civic issues such as housing, access to clean drinking water, affordable healthcare and electricity. Out of these factors, it’s the demand for regularisation of unauthorised colonies (UACs) that has emerged as a key electoral flashpoint.
Residents of these colonies have been demanding regularisation since 2008, since they do not enjoy complete ownership rights and often miss out on developmental work carried out by the government.
In December 2019, the BJP-led central government passed the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Recognition of Property Rights of Residents in Unauthorised Colonies) Bill, 2019. The Bill aims to provide ownership rights to 1,731 UACs following online registration and subsequent verification of documents.
The BJP’s Delhi unit hopes to cash in on this decision and has been organising outreach programmes across UACs in the city. The AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal, on the other hand, has called the BJP’s decision a ‘blatant lie’.
Prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal had sought to take on a national role and had emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the Modi government. However, following the party’s 2019 defeat in all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, Kejriwal had adopted a rather softer stance on PM Modi.
Instead of going all out on PM Modi and his BJP-led government, Kejriwal saw wisdom in focusing on welfare policies and outreach programmes. From Mohalla clinics to free bus rides for women to slashed electricity bills to reforming Delhi’s schools, the government has been going to town to make voters aware of the work done under its regime.
However, the AAP faces questions over its ability to provide clean drinking water to residents, following a BIS report that ranked Delhi’s tap water as one of the worst in the country.
Although the Kejriwal-led government has rubbished claims made in the report and has called it a politically-motivated move, the BJP has left no stone unturned in attacking the AAP over water quality in the capital.
For a long time, it appeared that the election was primarily being fought between the AAP and the BJP, solely on the former’s claim of good governance.
Shah was referring to the locality in South-East Delhi, where hundreds of Muslim women, some in their 70s and 80s, have been peacefully protesting against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, since mid December.
Corned by the BJP from all sides on Shaheen Bagh and mindful of its impact on his party’s performance, Kejriwal was forced to respond to the BJP on Shaheen Bagh. “Why are they not ending the protest – can a home minister as powerful as Amit Shah not get a road vacated? They are trying to polarise the voters ” he told Hindustan Times, claiming that the BJP was only looking to benefit from the blockade.
In a matter of weeks, Delhi’s election campaign was reduced from one being fought on civic issues and development to the ongoing protest at Shaheen Bagh.
The Delhi Assembly has 70 seats, which means the Union Territory is divided into 70 constituencies, each of which elect one representative to the Assembly. In order to form a government, a party or a group of parties (pre/post-poll coalition) must secure a majority of 36 seats.
In the first Assembly election of 1993, the BJP had won handsomely with 49 seats, while the Congress won only 14. However, in 1998 the Congress’s Sheila Dikshit bagged 52 seats, while the BJP finished second at 17. Dikshit managed to retain power for two successive terms – although with an increasingly diminishing margin – winning 47 seats in 2003 and then 42 in 2008.
Back then, the BJP was considered a party of Baniyas and upper-caste Hindus, while the Congress was considered a party supported Purvanchalis (Delhi residents native to Eastern UP and parts of Bihar), Dalits and Muslims. But the entry of AAP in 2013 tilted the Purvanchali votes in favour of Kejriwal’s Party.
According to an India Today article, Purvanchalis, if they vote similarly, can impact results in at least 25 seats, while Punjabis can turn the fortunes of a party in 25-30 seats.
The question is who will the Purvanchalis vote for this time? The AAP or the BJP, headed in Delhi, by Bhojpuri singer-turned-politician Manoj Tiwari? Similarly, will the Punjabis vote for the BJP or will they shift to the AAP?
Finally, who will Delhi’s Muslims vote for? Muslims, who make up 10-12% of voters, have traditionally voted for the Congress but moved en masse to AAP in 2015 only to return to the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)
Published: 07 Jan 2020,07:04 AM IST