Delhi Election 2020: In AAP-BJP Fight, Cong Banks On Candidates

Despite a low-key campaign, a few Congress candidates like Mateen Ahmed are giving BJP & AAP a run for their money.

With the Aam Aadmi Party and Bharatiya Janata Party engaged in an intense war of words, it may appear that the Delhi Assembly elections have become a two-horse race. Even three opinion polls have predicted that the Congress might end up as a distant third.

So does it mean that the Congress – which seemed unbeatable in Delhi under Sheila Dikshit from 1998 to 2013 – is nowhere in the picture?

Not entirely. There are a number of Congress candidates who are making their presence felt and this has given the party reason to hope that the results won’t be a complete washout like last time.

However, most party leaders are also realistic and say that the party is unlikely to cross single digits.

“We got 22 percent votes in the Lok Sabha. We want to retain that vote as much as possible. But it may be difficult as many voters vote differently in state elections,” a Delhi Congress leader said.

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There are three kinds of candidates that the Congress is pitching its hopes on:

• Sheila Dikshit’s ministers
• Muslim concentration seats
• Strong local candidates

Sheila Dikshit’s Ministers

The Congress has invoked the legacy of their three-term chief minister, late Sheila Dikshit, in its campaign. Many of the party’s posters also have Dikshit’s picture. The Congress has presented it as an “era of development and stable governance”.

Therefore, many of the Congress’ prominent candidates include those who were ministers in Dikshit’s government, such as:

• AK Walia - Laxmi Nagar
• Arvinder Singh Lovely - Gandhi Nagar
• Haroon Yusuf - Ballimaran
• Krishna Tirath - Patel Nagar
• Narendra Nath - Shahdara
• Parvez Hashmi - Okhla

Muslim Concentration Seats

In the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress was ahead of BJP and AAP only in Muslim dominated segments like Okhla, Seelampur, Matia Mahal and Ballimaran. BJP led in all other Assembly segments, AAP in none.

But at the Assembly level, some say Muslim votes could shift to AAP compared to the Lok Sabha polls. So, the Congress may lose its lead in some of these seats. The presence of strong AAP candidates such as Amanatullah Khan in Okhla, Shoaib Iqbal in Matia Mahal and Imran Hussain in Ballimaran is also making matters difficult for the Congress.

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Five-term MLA Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed in Seelampur is said to be the strongest Congress candidate in the elections. He also took a clear position in support of anti-CAA protesters in Seelampur, which has been one of the epicenters of the protests.

Strong Local Faces

Then, in a number of seats, the Congress has fielded candidates with a strong local connect. One of the most prominent faces in this category is Abhishek Dutt in Kasturba Nagar. A young face of the Congress, Dutt is said to be a popular municipal councillor and a member of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation’s standing committee.

In neighbouring Jangpura, there is Tarvinder Singh Marwah, a prominent Sikh face of the Congress and a member of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee.

In North West Delhi, the Congress is banking on former MLAs Devender Yadav in Badli and Jai Kishan in Sultanpur Majra. Both of them had managed to win even in an anti-Congress surge in 2013. Another prominent candidate in the area is Rajesh Lilothia, a prominent Dalit face of the Delhi Congress.

Mukesh Sharma in Vikaspuri and Bhisham Sharma in Ghonda are two more candidates who used to have a strong local connect, but this has weakened with the shift of Privileged Caste votes to BJP and AAP.

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Then, the Congress is optimistic that at least two candidates who were previously linked to AAP and BJP will also get a respectable vote share – Alka Lamba, the former AAP MLA from Chandni Chowk who is now contesting as a Congress candidate, and Poonam Azad, the party’s candidate from Sangam Vihar.

Azad was earlier with the BJP and AAP. Her husband, Kirti Azad, a former BJP MP, is part of Congress’ management committee for the Delhi elections.

For the Congress, the stakes aren’t as high as for the AAP and BJP. The party’s aim is to win a few seats, improve its vote share in the state and promote leaders who could be future faces of the party in Delhi.

The presence of strong Congress candidates, however, is said to be a threat for AAP since the party took over much of the Congress’ erstwhile base among Dalits, Muslims and non-Jat OBCs.

“The Congress isn’t much of a factor in around 55 seats. But in 10-15 seats, they can play spoiler because our voters are the same. When these voters see a candidate like, say Arvinder Lovely, who has some support among local influentials, they think he has a chance of winning. So this could harm us in a few seats. But overall, the Congress is not a factor,” an AAP strategist told The Quint.