New Delhi: With Delhi polls just around the corner, the battle for the Capital has become very intriguing indeed. The BJP, which was projecting the PM as its sole vote catching face during its previous assembly election campaigns in Jammu Kashmir, Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand has suddenly changed its strategy , almost mid-way and has brought in a rank outsider in former IPS officer Kiran Bedi. Perhaps, the "Gujarati businessman instinct" in Amit bhai has made him realize that this time the political Met Department is neither predicting a 'Modi Tsunami' or even a 'Modi wave' in Delhi and its time to cut losses by projecting Bedi as the face instead of Narendra Modi, given, perhaps the imminent prospect of BJP not being able to reach the half-way mark in Delhi!
The idea of BJP's failure to form government in Delhi being looked upon as a direct referendum on Modi's performance as Prime Minister in the last few months seems to outweigh any other consideration at this point of time including the disgruntlement in the BJP's Delhi unit for being totally sidelined by the party's central high command. I may be a staunch supporter of the Congress party but even I found the manner in which leaders like Dr.Harshwardhan and Satish Upadhyay were treated by the party's central leadership, lacked finesse to say the least. And if that wasn't enough, last minute imports from Congress party and AAP- the likes of Krishna Tirath, Vinod Binny and Shazia Ilmi, perhaps who can be legitimately viewed as nothing less than paragons of opportunism, being immediately rewarded with tickets and promises of plum posts, at the cost of dedicated footsoldiers of BJP and RSS who spent 20 years of their life to keep BJP alive in Delhi and ensure it made a 7-0 sweep in Lok Sabha elections, seemed to portray a sense of arrogance and insecurity in equal measure!
It certainly isn't my case, that Kiran Bedi has brought no value addition to the BJP. The tired faces of Delhi BJP namely the "Vijay" gang -Vijay Goel, Vijender Gupta, Vijay Jolly and Vijay Kumar Malhotra, with their scarce credibility, would certainly have been cornered hard on questions surrounding their deliverables to Delhi in the last 8 odd months while the Capital was under President's Rule. They lack even the basic organisational and credibility factor that an Upadhyay or Harshwardhan perhaps carry to some extent. Meanwhile an issue-based election would have meant fending off questions like why rapes and crimes in general are up by at least 30% since BJP came to power. Law and order comes directly under the Central government. No visible development has taken place either in the last few months and when juxtaposed with Congress' fifteen years which saw 130 flyovers and footover-bridges, completion of Delhi metro which has become a life-line for Delhiites amongst other things common sense would have dictated that BJP's poll strategy should centre around personalities rather than issues.
Co-incidentally, AAP too was trying its best to make this election a contest between personalities. While 'Kejriwal versus Mukhi' posters were adorning every other auto rickshaw hood, facing a former colleague from the India Against Corruption movement in Bedi whose perception as a "tough,honest officer" in public imagination persists notwithstanding her debatable track record, seems to have rattled the calculations of the former CM of Delhi just a bit. But not as much as the baggage of being seen as someone who failed to deliver on his tall promises and abandoned his 5 year long responsibility in just 49 days.
The Congress leadership including Rahul Gandhi has read the situation well by pushing Ajay Maken as the face of the Delhi Congress campaign. The Congress' main problem so far has been one of perception management and an inability to convey the good work done by its leadership. Rahul Gandhi and Congress, by giving a virtual free hand to Ajay Maken, who also heads the AICC Communication wing, has put the onus on him to marshal all the resources that he himself has built up and has control over now be it in social media , promotions or the main stream media.
Ruling out the Congress would be fool hardy. Maken is a recognizable face with a good administrative track record as both- Delhi government and Union government minister. He has the unique opportunity to claim a legacy of development in Delhi that the previous Congress governments painstakingly built under Sheila Dikshit. Even in the worst of times, when Congress got a mere 8 seats in 2013, it enjoyed a sizeable 25% vote share in Delhi. The recent results of Delhi Cantonment elections reveal that though Congress could not manage to increase its seat tally due to the tyranny of the FPTP system, it did register a massive 11% rise in vote share while BJP and AAP lost vote share! It would now be incumbent on Ajay Maken to keep the Congress flock together, especially the minority faces of the party given that the AAP has made sizeable dent into that particular support base of the party. If he can manage to do that Congress could prove to be the dark horse of this election that pollsters may discount but only at their own peril.
As polling day dawns closer, the Battle for the Capital could well end up becoming a battle for survival for AAP, a battle for approval for Modi and a battle for revival for the Congress. All eyes are only on February 10, the day judgement!
(Shehzad Poonawalla is a lawyer and Congress supporter. Views expressed here are his personal)
Comments
0 comment