An hour after the Election Commission of India announced the date for the Delhi assembly elections Monday, chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal maintained that the ensuing polls will be fought only on development issues.
Setting the agenda for the AAP in the upcoming elections, Kejriwal said his party will refrain from negative campaigns, indicating a visible shift from his once “confrontationist stance” to one where his party would focus only on the work done by the government over the past five years.
“Our entire campaign will be positive. This time, elections will be fought on work done. Vote for us only if you think we have done work, otherwise don’t,” the chief minister said Monday when asked by reporters about AAP’s strategy in the wake of the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night and the continuing protests across the city against the amended citizenship law.
Voting for the assembly elections will be held on February 8 and counting on February 11. In the 2015 assembly elections, the AAP had recorded a meteoric rise, winning 67 (54.3% vote share) of the total 70 assembly seats. The Kejriwal-led party, which emerged from the India Against Corruption movement, made its electoral debut in politics in Delhi’s 2013 assembly polls in which it won 28 seats (29.5% in terms of vote share).
Senior leaders in the AAP said this time, the party is expecting “a comfortable majority”, even though its performance in the 2019 general elections, the last poll battle fought by the party, remained “highly dissatisfactory” for the top leadership.
The AAP’s vote share had reduced from 32.9% in 2014 Lok Sabha elections to 18.1% in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Three of its seven candidates in Delhi even lost their deposit as they got fewer than one/sixth the votes polled.
Police, DDA, MCD vs Delhi Govt
Kejriwal said people will vote based on the comparison between the works done by the agencies controlled by the Centre and those done by the AAP government.
“People of Delhi will judge whether the BJP-ruled Centre handled the police, the MCDs (municipal corporations) and the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) well, or whether the AAP-ruled Delhi government provided good education and health, free electricity and water, developed roads and so on. The people of Delhi do not want their city to have the same fate as the MCDs. They are happy with the progress of work in the sectors of education, health, power, water and so on. These development works should not stop,” Kejriwal said, addressing a press conference.
Concerns
Kejriwal has supported the anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) voices and condemned the more recent JNU violence, but only from a distance. While focusing on local issues may be a formal strategy of the AAP chief for the elections next month, leaders within the party said these incidences are leading to polarisation in various pockets of the capital which “could be a concern” for the party.
“It only brings us back to our old demand of granting Delhi full statehood. In our campaigns, we are reminding people that the police and the subject of law and order are directly under the BJP-ruled Centre and not under the state government,” Gopal Rai, AAP’s Delhi unit convener, said.
In its campaigns, the party is now also specifically talking about unauthorised colonies after the Centre launched a scheme to grant ownership rights to residents of 1,731 such colonies. The nearly four million residents of such colonies, including constituencies such as Sangam Vihar, Deoli, Ambedkar Nagar, are considered to be the stronghold of the AAP. With its latest scheme, the BJP is hoping to make a dent in this particular vote base.
Kejriwal vs Who?
The AAP has already began a poll narrative of ‘Kejriwal vs Who?’ in the city as the BJP is still contemplating on whether the election will be fought with a CM face or not.
“Prime minister Narendra Modi may be the face of the BJP’s campaign. He is welcome to come and campaign for the BJP in Delhi too. But, the PM won’t leave his position to become the CM here,” Kejriwal had said in one of his town hall meetings last week.
Sanjay Kumar, director at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), said despite the polarisation, the AAP has the advantage because people tend to vote differently in the General and Assembly elections.
“The AAP has an edge in the upcoming polls not just because people seem to be happy with its governance model which revolves around health, education, water, power, social welfare and development, but also because they are clear about the difference in voting for a PM and voting for a CM. I see the Delhi polls completely as a biparty contest between the AAP and the BJP. The Congress may see an increase in its vote share, but it is unlikely to cause much damage to others,” he said.
