About 48 km from one end to another, Bawana is one of Delhi’s largest and most varied Assembly segments, with lush green villages existing alongside crowded, unauthorised slum clusters.
Ahead of the August 23 bypoll in the reserved constituency, home to over three lakh voters, The Indian Express follows the campaign of the BJP, AAP and the Congress to understand why the contest holds great significance for each party.
About 48 km from one end to another, Bawana is one of Delhi’s largest and most varied Assembly segments, with lush green villages existing alongside crowded, unauthorised slum clusters. Punctuating these are a few pockets of Rohini, mostly comprising vacant DDA flats. Ahead of the August 23 bypoll, Bawana is also ground zero for a pitched battle between the BJP, the AAP and the Congress. To understand the significance of this bypoll, one only needs to look at what is at stake for each party.
For the AAP, which won the 2015 elections with a resounding majority, Bawana offers a chance to overturn two electoral losses — the Punjab Assembly elections and the MCD polls. The BJP, on the other hand, hopes to build on the momentum from the victory in MCD polls. But the highest stakes, perhaps, are for the Congress, which, for the first time in the history of Delhi’s politics, has not had representation in the Delhi Assembly and hopes to finally win its sole seat. The contest, though, is anything but easy.
At the BJP office in Bawana. (Source: Express Photo/Abhinav Saha)
One of the 12 reserved seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly, Bawana’s 26 rural villages have traditionally voted for the BJP, and the colonies have traditionally voted for the Congress. The pattern began to change from 1998, five years after Bawana was declared a reserved seat, when an influx of migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar moved to the ‘colonies’ in the area, tilting the electoral advantage in favour of the Congress — so much so that their candidate, Surender Kumar, remained the legislator from1998 to 2013.
But with Kumar losing to the BJP in 2013, and AAP winning the seat in 2015, none of the three parties are confident of which way the wind is blowing, with party leaders maintaining that “it all depends on the voter turnout”. The fact that the issues the residents are facing vary every few kilometres makes coming up with a strategy that much harder. At Bawana village — the largest of the 26 rural villages — Om Prakash Rana (45) explained, “The villages are very different from the colonies. Here, the concerns are that fertilizers are expensive, seeds are hard to get and water for irrigation is poor. Water is a problem on both sides, but here it’s more pronounced because the need is more. Plus, in the last few years, our crops were destroyed by hailstorms. That is also a major concern.”
In comparison, at Shahbad Dairy — the largest of the slum clusters in the area — Ram Kumar, a migrant from Madhubani district in Bihar, said, “We don’t own land here. We barely have any space to live. I have been working as a labourer for a decade. All I want is to earn enough to eat and drink, and make a decent salary so my children can go to school.” What unites these two distinct areas of Bawana, though, is the sense of “waste” that the bypoll entails. With Assembly elections in Delhi scheduled in less than three years, residents maintained that the election is a “waste of taxpayer money”.
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The bypoll was necessitated after AAP legislator Ved Parkash quit the Delhi Assembly just ahead of the municipal polls to join the BJP. Parkash, who had been in the BJP until 2015, fought the Assembly polls that year as an AAP candidate after being denied a ticket by his former party. Speaking to The Indian Express, he explained his reason for leaving AAP for the BJP this time: “They turned Delhi into a launching pad for Punjab. I kept telling Kejriwal and other leaders that this is not why the people of Delhi had voted for us. But they wouldn’t listen. Everything, from what was being said in press conferences to what would be asked at the Delhi Assembly, was coordinated and pre-decided. How can anyone work like that?”
At the AAP office in Bawana. (Source: Express Photo/Abhinav Saha)
He added, “If I hadn’t left the party then, my political career would have been finished. I have another 20 years left; for me coming back to the BJP was like a ghar wapsi.” BJP leaders said their strategy for Bawana would be the same as it was during the MCD polls — a combination of Modi’s image, a promise of governance as provided by the Centre, and a hint of nationalism. Parkash argued, “Which other party will stand for the Jats? They are the backbone of our nation, they are the farmers and the soldiers. They are nationalism.”
BJP MP Parvesh Verma, the party in-charge for the bypoll, added, “The BJP will win as it has approved the land pooling policy, which will benefit the rural population.” The challenge for the former AAP legislator, though, will be to explain to people why he left the party and joined the BJP. A close aide said, “When he left, some people felt betrayed. But we had to explain to them what AAP was doing. It is something that comes up still, but we are dealing with it.”
For now, the BJP appears confident. The party office is a week-old, freshly painted in saffron and green with photographs of the PM dotting its walls. A lotus has been painted at the entrance. Asked how the campaign was progressing, a BJP leader said, “We bought four quintals of sugar to make laddoos, which got over in a week. We bought 50 cartons of water, almost over in two days. People are flocking to the BJP. Whether it’s Bihar or Bawana, people want the BJP and they know we will form a government.”
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To get to Punjab Khor village, one has to drive 8 km from Bawana village along the Saheb Singh Verma road. On Thursday, AAP cabinet minister and Delhi convener Gopal Rai, who is handling the campaign, sat there, addressing the 100-odd people who had gathered at the rural chowk. “The greatest advantage that AAP has is that it’s in power in Delhi, which is why it can do the most for you,” he said. Rai described such events as “seedhi baat” sessions, an opportunity for the party — that feels its strength is in the unauthorised colonies and slum clusters — to make its presence felt in these villages. Their candidate, Ram Chandra, who had contested on a BSP ticket in 2008 and had received 14 per cent of the votes, is a resident of Shahbad Dairy.
A Purvanchali, AAP hopes that Chandra will be able to mobilise voters in these clusters, dominated by residents from Bihar and eastern UP. “Has any other party done so much for those who are poor and live in slums? From free electricity to water, from mohalla clinics to improving the standard of education is government schools. There is no question in their minds about who they should vote for,” said Ram Chandra.
Rai, on the other hand, is focussing on rural villages. “The smart village idea is a game- changer. This is something the Delhi government has recently done. They have constituted a rural development board and decided to allocate Rs 2 crore to each village annually under the ‘Smart Village’ scheme. In the case of Bawana, with 26 villages, the amount comes up to Rs 52 crore. An MLA, on the other hand, gets only Rs 4 crore to develop the entire area. This will give power back to the villagers and let them decide on how the money should be spent.”
But, will the project not come through if AAP doesn’t win the polls? “It will. But it’s better if the MLA and the government are from the same party. Things work more smoothly then,” Rai said. Another AAP leader explained, “With Parkash leaving the party, the onus is on him to explain why he left. Anti-incumbency is not a factor here; in fact, us heading the state government puts us in a unique position from where we can deliver results faster and more easily.”
Of the three party offices, AAP’s — currently run out of three rooms at a cricket coaching centre for teens, three kilometres away from Shahbad Dairy — is arguably the busiest. A small army of volunteers can be seen going through documents, while a room has been assigned to Rai to meet voters who turn up with their problems. What neither Rai nor Ram Chandra admits is the desperation that underscores this frantic activity. “We simply can’t afford to lose another election. But this is different — enough time has passed and Rai has virtually been here for the past month,” said a volunteer.
Since the MCD poll loss, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal seems to have largely disappeared from public discourse in the capital. However, he has made frequent visits to rural areas, including Bawana — either to talk about the land pooling policy that the DDA had passed, which both the BJP and the AAP take credit for, or to speak about the “historical” rates of compensation that the AAP government gives to farmers for destroyed crops, or just to tout MLA Kailash Gehlot’s promotion to the Delhi cabinet. On June 3, Kejriwal had said in Bawana, “No other government works for the villages like we do. The land pooling policy, we hope, will bring joy and income. Gehlot will be the voice of the villages in the cabinet.”
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The Congress, meanwhile, hopes the swapping of leaders between the BJP and the AAP will work to its advantage. Pointing to the induction of former BJP MLA Gugan Singh — who won the 2013 elections from Bawana with a margin of over 20,000 voters — into AAP, Delhi state unit chief Ajay Maken said, “Both parties are morally bankrupt. What kind of inducement must the BJP have given to the AAP MLA, for him to have resigned from AAP and joined the BJP? He negated the mandate that the people of Bawana had given him. Similarly, what kind of inducement must the AAP have given to the BJP leader?”
At the Congress office in Bawana. (Source: Express Photo/Abhinav Saha)
While Singh’s induction to AAP has been touted as a “masterstroke” by some who feel it will help them get traction in rural areas of Bawana, Congress candidate and three-time MLA from the area, Surender Kumar, said he is relying on his past work. “As MLA, I worked here day and night for 15 years. I am a strong believer of the Congress’ philosophy of ensuring that the poor and the middle class have ‘roti, kapda aur makaan’. They have always felt safe when the Congress is in power… not like now.”
The Congress office in Bawana, a few metres from the BJP office, is not new. A little away from the road, it opens into a massive hall with a high ceiling. A desk is placed at one corner, with two landlines and a pile of notebooks. On the other side, mattresses have been laid out, where some party workers were taking a nap on Thursday afternoon. Asked about Kumar’s schedule, a handwritten sheet is drawn out. He is scheduled to travel to eight areas and meet people as part of his ‘padyatra’. But a Congress worker informed that the timing of each meeting hasn’t been mentioned. After some discussion, a phone call is made to figure out where the Congress candidate is.
Another worker added, “This is the problem with the party. Our candidate is easily the best, the most seasoned and arguably the most popular. You don’t win an election thrice otherwise. Nobody has heard of Ved Parkash or Ram Chandra, but after our defeats in the elections since 2013, the organisation hasn’t been the same.” When Kumar was eventually traced, he told The Indian Express, “I have worked selflessly for the people of Bawana for years. There is no doubt in my mind that we will win.”
