by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
In Delhi, where elections for the assembly’s 70 seats are due this week (Saturday), the betting odds are still high on BJP. The reason is obvious: gamblers place their stakes on past records, not on future uncertainties. Even PM Narendra Modi is finally banking on “luck” to win Delhi. The Aam Admi Party, dark horse in Delhi’s 2013 poll, no doubt upset all calculations as it came a close second with 28 seats, after BJP’s 31. The rest is of course history, with AAP chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s 49-day government becoming a joke or a lament, depending on which side of the picket fence one would look at it.
Nevertheless, bookmakers are right as BJP was the leading party in the most recent state election. Besides, just a few months ago, its sensational victory in the Lok Sabha election, winning more than half the seats as a single party, put its profile, and also that of its charismatic leader Modi, to such lofty height that AAP seemed a Lilliputian in comparison. From then on, Modi’s electoral column triumphed everywhere—Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, even J&K. In the April/May parliamentary poll, the BJP under Modi swept all of Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats. It traditional opponent, Congress went to the doghouse in 2013, with a stunning 15.7 per cent drop in its vote share, and only eight seats in its kitty. If Congress gets more blows, which is likely, and AAP is perceived as indecisive, who gains? BJP of course.
But, giving a thumbs-down to conventional wisdom, and bookies, Kejriwal’s AAP is improving its prospects by the day. Till a week before the election, opinion polls conceded that AAP might go neck and neck with BJP, with one pollster predicting simple majority for AAP. With BJP, cold sweat is visible. Confident of his personal popularity after victory in the Lok Sabha poll, Modi made it a rule to refrain from naming his party’s chief ministerial candidate before state polls and let the party ride instead on his personal charisma. He followed the same practice in Delhi, and held a rally at the city’s Ramlila Grounds on 10 January, grandiosely called ‘Abhinandan’ rally. About half the seats in the rally lay vacant, and audiences had to be ferried in from neighbouring states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The opening show was ominous. In the rally, Modi was churlish, calling Kejriwal names. But it showed more fright than his trademark self-confidence.
Things did not look brighter after Modi suddenly strayed from his practice and named ex-IPS officer, social activist and Magsaysay Award winner Kiran Bedi as BJP’s choice as Delhi chief minister. The 65-year-old policewoman shared stage with Kejriwal during the Anna Hazare-led anti-graft movement but had fallen out after Kejriwal floated his political party, an act that Hazare stoutly opposed. By choosing Bedi as his party’s face, Modi seemed to concede that the leader Delhi’s voters were looking for was not one who’d pay obeisance to the RSS but have a reputation as administrator. But there is a difference. Kejriwal is regarded as a fighter and Bedi a ‘committee lady’.
If Modi’s armada loses in Delhi,
it may still not be his Waterloo. But……..
Moreover, BJP has given the city-state election a ‘star war’ look, with 20 ministers and 120 MPs roped in to counter AAP’s challenge. Leading the BJP attack is Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister and next in rank to Modi in the Union Cabinet. Congress, BJP’s traditional rival, has spectacularly dropped off the party’s cross hairs. Top BJP leaders from other states, like Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Navjot Singh Siddhu, have been flown into the capital to canvass for votes in constituencies where they have some following.
BJP is clearly rattled by the political developments in Delhi. On the surface, it is one of the country’s best kept cities, with more impressive buildings, offices, organizations, parks, educational institutions, etc., than in any other city. But, at its heart, it is a city of immigrants. For every two Delhi-born resident of the city, three were born outside. Most of those who have moved into the city were no doubt driven by poverty and lack of opportunities at home. But, in Delhi, they must pay for every bit of their existence—be it the water to drink, the electricity, a roof above head, medical facility and children’s education. Besides, it is a city which encapsulates, in a population of about 19 million, the stark income inequalities of India that the world is now increasingly talking about, including President Barach Obama, who hinted at these aspects in his candid speech at Siri Fort Auditorium during his recent visit to India. An NSSO survey has shown that 60 per cent of Delhi households earn Rs 14,500 or less per month while 30 per cent—mostly being Central and State Government employees—earn between Rs 15,000 and Rs 30,000. On the other hand, those earning between Rs 30,000 and Rs 1.2 lakh are a sliver of 7 per cent of the households. One can sense how tiny is the share of those earning above Rs 1.2 lakh which, in its turn, is no king’s ransom really.
It is clearly the frustration and anger of the lower-and middle strata of the middle class which is defining the course of politics in the capital. The majority of voters are not impressed by six-lane roads and BMW cars and such other symbols of ‘development’ during the Congress rule. Nor do they have much faith in the “governance” slogan Modi whose party, in its turn, is chock full of cronies of the same businessmen.
‘Jolly, LLB’, the film that won the National Award for best film this year, is about a lawyer from small town who arrives in Delhi for a better career but fights, and wins, a tough and dangerous legal battle for a group of pavement dwellers mowed down by a rich man’s son driving drunk his SUV. Most Delhi voters fancy that they’ll have a saviour like Jolly. Or Kejriwal, for that matter. If Modi’s armada loses in Delhi, it may still not be his Waterloo. But, with elections in most of the states in the Gangetic plains (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal) due in the next couple of years, it may be the beginning of the end.
