Political parties hit the road in do-or-die effort

In a struggle to remain relevant in Delhi, the Congress has worked on pooling its resources in 32 out of 70 seats, unlike BJP or AAP

Political parties poured the last reserves of energy, as the campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections wound down on Thursday, 48 hours before the February 7 election. Counting will begin on the morning of February 10.

Barring the Congress, which has avoided spreading itself too thin and has concentrated its energies in a few constituencies, neither the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seen as the main competitors, held back and their supporters hit the road all over Delhi.

After 6 pm on Thursday, only door-to-door canvassing will be permitted. As a parting shot, the BJP alleged it had evidence that AAP had distributed cash to influence voters in the Chandni Chowk constituency. AAP joined Christian community leaders in a demonstration against attacks on churches and used the social media to describe how the police had manhandled peaceful crowds. The balance of advantage is held not just by the minority communities in Delhi but also by the migrant Uttar Pradesh-Bihar population settled here.

Between 20 and 25 seats have a large Purvanchali presence and can upset all calculations. In the last round of Assembly elections, much of the Purvanchali vote had gone to AAP, something the BJP has tried to prise away by creating new structures in the party (the Poorvanchal Prakoshth) and getting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadres to work in these areas. RSS workers are also working indefatigably in Trilokpuri, one of Delhi’s largest and most influential slums in voting terms. Because of its multi-cultural population (it has about 4,000-Tamil speaking families, a large number of migrant Marathi-speaking families and other communities) the RSS has gone about influencing this population in a scientific way, tapping both the organisation and ministers. Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu visited the slum two days ago. Other ministers have beaten a path to its door, offering all manner of corrective steps to improve the quality of life of the people living here. The BJP acknowledges that it is not easy to beat the AAP that had won here in the last election but says it has spared no effort to win residents back.

A group of AAP leaders joined the BJP on Thursday and were unleashed upon the voters describing the dictatorial trends in AAP’s internal working. But this does not detract from the fact that BJP workers owing allegiance to the traditional leaders of Delhi – VK Malhotra, Vijay Goel, etc – have not been as enthusiastic about the election as they had been in the past, leading to fears about the BJP scoring goals against its own side. It is the Congress that is the most badly off in this election. In a struggle to remain relevant in Delhi, the Congress has worked on pooling its resources in 32 out of the 70 seats in the fray.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s last road show on Thursday was strategically located in Sultanpur Majra constituency, where sitting MLA Jai Kishan had defeated his AAP rival in 2013 by only a margin of 1.2 per cent votes.  

The shortlisted 32 constituencies are those where the Congress won or came a close second and the party attempted to put in that extra spurt whether it be through rallies and roadshows of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and party VP.  The party is banking on seats in Muslim-dominated areas, which have been Congress strongholds Okhla, Seelampur, Ballimaran, included in that shortlist, to deliver.  

Congress strategists are expecting to bag at least 12 of these 32, claiming that the anti- Congress wave that marked the polls of 2013 and then Lok Sabha 2014, had receded by now. Seven senior Congress leaders like Bhupinder S Hooda, Salman Khurshid and CP Joshi have been deputed to coordinate the activities in these select constituencies under the seven parliamentary constituencies.