New Delhi: Delhi is known for voting differently in different elections. This is why despite the BJP winning all the seven Lok Sabha seats, no major political player is taking the outcome as a clear indicator of which way the capital city would go in the assembly polls due early next year.
As such, along with the saffron party, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have also started preparing early for the upcoming polls.
AAP workers told to prepared for ‘small election’ ahead
The first to sound the poll bugle for the assembly elections was chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. Just a day after the Lok Sabha results were announced, he told his party workers to not get disheartened and prepare for the battle ahead.
Claiming that Delhi wasn’t “insulated” from the “wave” which had swept the country, he told party workers and volunteers at a gathering in West Delhi that “There’s no reason to be upset when the entire country is praising our candidates and hard work.”
Telling his workers that there was “no negativity against them”, the Delhi chief minister urged them to “go back to people and tell them that the bada chunav (big election) is over and the chhota chunav (small election) is here”.
Kejriwal also sent a message to his party legislators in which he said: “All MLAs will have to work very hard, starting now. After talking to several MLAs, we have come to the conclusion that over the next 15 days, MLAs will have to hold small meetings and tell voters that they have made mistakes and they will make up for them in the assembly polls.”
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. Credit: PTI
The chief minister has also re-initiated work on the CCTV project and for getting more standard floor buses in the Delhi Transport Corporation fleet. The elected government has also taken up the much-delayed social audit which was initiated following the death of three girls due to starvation last July. Though it was to have been completed by now, it fell off the radar due to the elections.
Despite the BJP winning sweeping the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, AAP had performed stupendously in the assembly elections which followed in 2015 – bagging 67 of the 70 seats and nearly 54.5% of the votes.
BJP won 65 assembly segments in Lok Sabha polls, AAP none
However, in this Lok Sabha election, AAP could not upset the BJP applecart and, in fact, finished third – behind Congress – in all the seats barring South Delhi and North West Delhi. Of the 70 assembly segments, in BJP polled the maximum votes in 65 followed by Congress in five.
Also read: The Delhi Voter’s Conundrum
A crucial factor for AAP is that the Muslim voters, who supported it whole-heartedly in 2015, appear to have drifted back towards the Congress. This was admitted by Kejriwal himself after the voting when he said that they shifted on the last day. This also reflected in the results.
Muslims, Dalits drifted away from AAP
In five of the seven segments which are dominated by Muslims – Seelampur, Okhla, Matia Mahal, Chandni Chowk and Ballimaran – the Congress got maximum votes. In other two – Babarpur and Mustafabad in North East Delhi – BJP remained ahead.
Dalit voters too appear to have gravitated away from AAP and towards the Congress and BJP. The party did not fare well in areas such as Ambedkar Nagar, Sultanpur Majra, Deoli, Kirari, Sangam Vihar and Narela where a section of the Scheduled Caste community resides.
This was a major reason why in comparison to the 2015 polls, the voting percentage of AAP fell from 54.5% to a mere 18% while that of Congress rose from around 9% to over 21%. The BJP’s vote share also rose significantly from around 33% to over 56%.
Congress takes introspection route to revival
Upbeat at having made inroads into AAP strongholds, the Delhi Congress under three-time former CM and now party unit chief Sheila Dikshit has also started planning ahead.
She has formed a five-member committee comprising former Delhi ministers A.K. Walia and Yoganand Shastri, former MP Parvez Hashmi, former MLA Jai Kishen and her own former political secretary Pawan Khera to ascertain the reasons for the defeat. This, however, has already resulted in infighting within the party as the three working presidents of the Delhi Congress were not consulted before the decision on the panel was taken.
Sheila Dikshit. Credit: PTI
Congress would also have to work hard on ensuring that its senior leaders do not leave the party at this crucial juncture. It has already lost the services of two former ministers, Raj Kumar Chauhan and Krishna Tirath, who both represented the SC category.
BJP plans ahead, wants improvements to show through civic bodies
The BJP has also drawn up plans to retain the voters who moved towards it recently. It does not want a repeat of 2014 when after voting for Modi, they opted for AAP in the assembly polls. The party suffers on two counts. One is that while Kejriwal and Dikshit are the CM faces of their parties, BJP lacks a prominent face. Its choice of Vijay Kumar Malhotra in 2008 and Kiran Bedi in 2015 boomeranged on its prospects.
Party unit chief Manoj Tiwari, has, in the meantime started working on improving the functioning of the three municipal corporations. He believes their performance would hold the key to the party retaining its hold in much of the city.