As campaign for Delhi's seven Lok Sabha seats ended in high drama with the AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal being slapped yet again during a road show in North-West Delhi, the National Capital is all set to witness its first three way Lok Sabha elections between the BJP, Congress and the AAP.
An estimated 12 million voters will be eligible to take part in the day-long polling across 11,763 centres to elect seven MPs from among 150 candidates, including 57 independents on April 10.
What makes the fight so interesting for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi is that the Congress which won all seven Lok Sabha seats in the 2009 elections seems to loosening its grip amongst voters.
In sharp contrast to the last Lok Sabha elections the Congress won just eight seats out of 70 seats in the December Assembly elections. The BJP got 31 but it was the debutant AAP which captured the nations imagination by managing to get 28 seats.
If the results of assembly elections are anything to go by anti-incumbency seems to be at an all time high. But all parties claim they are confident of a victory.
"We will win all seven Lok Sabha seats as the people want Modi to be the PM. The Congress is no where and the AAP had been exposed", said Dr Harsh Vardhan, BJP candidate from Chandni Chowk during campaigning on Tuesday.
But the Congress is not giving up either. "There was some confusion but now everyone has been exposed, people will choose development over those who ran away on 49 days", says DPCC chief Arvinder Singh Lovely.
One of the most interesting fights will be witnessed in the Chandni Chowk constituency where sitting MP Kapil Sibal will face a tough fight from Harsh Vardhan and AAP's Ashutosh. Chandni Chowk has a large population of traders and baniyas who had been conventionally BJP voters but this time with the AAP also fielding a baniya candidate, the fight has become tough for the BJP, which is hoping to ride high on the Modi wave.
On the other hand Congress's conventional voters - the minorities and the lower middle class seems to getting split between them and the AAP.
Similarly the New Delhi constituency will see an interesting three cornered fight between the Congress MP Ajay Maken, BJP's Meenakhi Lekhi and another journalist-turned-politician Ashish Khetan of the AAP. Though Ajay Maken is still considered a strong contender, the Congress is facing a very tough challenge in seats like East Delhi where former CM Sheila Dikshit's son Sandeep Dikshit will face Mahatma Gandhi's grandson AAP's candidate Rajmohan Gandhi and BJP's Mahesh Giri.
It was in East Delhi where the Congress lost eight out of the 10 seats in the last Assembly elections. The constituency also had around 30-35 per cent of Muslims voters and a large number of resettlement colonies and JJ clusters, most of them had voted for the AAP in the last assembly elections and a seizable number of middle class voters who the BJP hopes will vote for them, owing to the Modi wave.
In West and North West Delhi the battle seems clearly between the BJP and the AAP. North west Delhi which is Delhi' only Lok Sabha constituency 21 per cent population are Dalits and over 17 per cent are Jats, while most of the Dalit voters seem to be inclined to the AAP, most of rural Delhi plans to vote for the BJP.
"We will vote for BJP as we want Modi to be the next PM", says a resident of Kanjawala village in the constituency. Most of the youngsters we interacted with in Mangolpuri say they will vote for 'jhadu'. With many residents upset with sitting MP Krishna Tirath's performance, the fight seems virtually between AAP's Rakhi Birla and BJP's Udit Raj.
Though Delhi is a metropolis, caste and religion also play a big role here. Perhaps that's why the AAP had fielded Jarnail Singh (the man who threw a shoe at P Chidambaram before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections) from West Delhi which has a mix Sikh and Punjabi population. The BJP had fielded Parvesh Verma, its Jat face and son of former CM Saheb Singh Verma, to woo the Jat voters, as 70 out of the 90 villages in the constituency are Jat dominated.
The south Delhi constituency has a huge traders community and huge Gujjar vote bank in areas like Madanpur Khadar, which is what the BJP candidate Ramesh Bidhuri is banking on this time. To woo a substantial Poorvanchali voters in from North East Delhi, BJP has fielded singer-turned-politician Manoj Tiwari.
Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Rajmohan Gandhi of the AAP is taking on former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit's son Sandeep Dikshit in East Delhi.
With Delhi all set to cast its votes between 7am to 6pm on April 10, all eyes will be on the national capital despite it having just seven Lok Sabha seats as unlike any other elections it will be a three way fight for the first time here.
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