Delhi elections – barometer to judge the position of the Modi government

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PM Modi had deliberately pulled himself out of the media glare for some time to concentrate on his red Fort rampart Speech where he may announce his future road map for the country

sri_krishna

ENARADA, New Delhi

By Sri Krishna

The battle for Delhi is indeed heating up as the D-Day of February seven comes close and though it appears to be a two-way battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Admi Party (AAP) with the Congress an also ran, what is indeed interesting is that all the three parties are faced with severe infighting.

The outcome of the Assembly elections would be based on which party has been least affected by infighting specially in BJP and AAP led by Arvind Kejriwal who has been campaigning hard to wipe out the image of his 49-day rule which had ended on a rather disastrous note and the party popularity graph had slid rather low.

Besides, it is going to be the first acid test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi for within six months of the BJP-led NDA Government coming to power, it is indeed facing a tough task.

PM Modi had deliberately pulled himself out of the media glare for some time to concentrate on  his  red Fort rampart Speech  where he may announce his future road map for the country
PM Narendra Modi

The elections are indeed a barometer to judge the position of the Modi government.

Though the BJP had won all the seven Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 polls leading in 60 of the 70 Assembly segments that make up Delhi, but, that cannot be taken as the real measure of the party’s standing in the coming Assembly elections.

Of course, the run up to the elections saw several Aam Aadmi Party leaders as also the leading figure in the Anna Hazare movement and former policewoman Kiran Bedi joining BJP and immediately being proclaimed as the party’s chief ministerial candidate upsetting several top local BJP leaders and what added fuel to the anger of BJP workers was the virtual sidelining of BJP Delhi unit President Satish Upadhyaya who has not even been given an assembly ticket.

Among those who joined BJP recently and were given tickets included Shazia Ilmi and Vinod Kumar Binny of the AAP and former union minister and Congress leader Mrs Krishna Tirath who too would be contesting the Assembly elections.

These have annoyed several local leaders who are vehemently critical of the party giving tickets to those who have just “paradropped” into the party apparently wanting to capitalise on what they think is a BJP wave sweeping the country.

“Considering that the party did extremely well in the Lok Sabha and subsequently in the Assembly elections in Maharasthra, Haryana and Jharkhand, these leaders want to ride on the crest of this BJP wave,” said a BJP leader who did not want to be named.

But, the contest that would be keenly watched would be in the posh South Delhi Assembly segment of Greater Kailash where Sharmishta Mukherjee, daughter of President Pranab Mukherjee would be contesting.

However, the indications are that this is one seat which the BJP may not contest seriously and prefer that she gets elected.

Despite the infighting and projecting for the first time probably an “outsider” in that not a veteran party leader as Chief Ministerial candidate by the BJP had angered many but surveys continue to predict a favourable tally for the saffron party with the forecast being that they may win half the seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly, falling just short of a clear majority.

AAP is looking to make a strong challenge and is likely to win 29 seats, one more than what it had last time.

Congress, is expected to do even worse than last year when it won eight seats and is now likely to bag only five seats.

BJP had won 31 seats in the last elections, which were held in December, 2013.

The BJP is expected to get 42 per cent of the votes while AAP was tipped to corner a 40 per cent vote share followed by Congress with only 11 per cent of the votes. The three parties had last time received 33, 29 and 25 per cent of the votes in Delhi, respectively.

In a recent development, one of the founder members of AAP and leading lawyer Shanti Bhushan had praised BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate Ms Kiran Bedi saying “it is a masterstroke by the BJP to field Kiran Bedi,” adding that the former IPS officer would prove to be a good chief minister giving the BJP facing severe dissension over the choice of CM candidate a much needed boost.

His son and AAP member Prashant Bhushan, however, disagrees.

“Kiran Bedi did not join the Aam Aadmi Party saying she was against electoral politics. Now she has joined a party which is not only corrupt but is communal, fascist, obscurantist and which has rolled back all pro-people welfare measures brought by the previous corrupt UPA regime,’’ said Prashant Bhushan.

Mr. Shanti Bhushan and Mr. Prashant Bhushan were on the joint-drafting committee that went into drafting the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill. Mr. Shanti Bhushan was the co-chair of the panel along with former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The panel was dismantled after the government refused to take the Jan Lokpal draft of the civil society movement to the Union Cabinet for approval.

Asked for comments, the AAP said the views expressed by Mr. Shanti Bhushan were his ‘personal views’.

Posted on January 23 , 2015, 7:00am

(Author is a Senior Journalist and his email id is srikrishna1952@gmail.com)

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