Confident BJP, charged-up Congress eye AAP’s city crown

NEW DELHI: Just ahead of the assembly elections in 2020, the results of the Lok Sabha polls have altered the political landscape of the city. With BJP way ahead of other parties, Congress has the satisfaction of reclaiming a lot of the ground it had ceded to AAP. The ruling AAP, in the third place, is staring at a dismal scenario.
The results have come as a shot in the arm for BJP which has been out of power in Delhi for more than 20 years now. Though the party had scored a resounding victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections, it failed to capitalise on the advantage in the 2015 assembly polls amid a strong pro-AAP wave that saw the ruling party in Delhi getting a record mandate by winning 67 seats in the 70-member house.

With AAP on a sticky wicket now, BJP will be looking at repeating the performance eight months from now. “We are fighting the Delhi election in two phases. The first phase has just got over and we got a huge support from people. The second phase will take place in January next year,” said Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari. “We already have our party in a majority in the three municipal corporations. We are forming the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership at the Centre and will have a BJP government in Delhi next year.” He said that AAP is a party of liars and it will be removed from Delhi by people. “Delhi chahe Modi ka saath,” he said.
Though he led BJP to victory in the 2017 municipal polls and all Lok Sabha seats have now been taken with bigger margins under his leadership, it remains to be seen if Tiwari will be third time lucky.
The state elections are usually fought on local issues. While AAP claims to have done “revolutionary work” in education and health, which has resonated with people, BJP’s performance in the three corporations has been riddled with complaints of corruption and incompetence. Senior party leaders agree that they will have to take corrective steps to ensure that this does not adversely affect the assembly elections.
AAP has only eight months to regain lost ground. The full statehood issue doesn’t seem to have resonated with voters. The party will have to focus more on delivering on its promises rather than lapsing time and again into blaming the central government and the multiplicity of agencies in the capital for different gover nance issues.
AAP, however, feels that the party was ignored since this was a national election. It points to the fact that though it was defeated on all seven LS seats of Delhi in 2014, it went on to win the 2015 assembly elections with a huge margin.
Congress, meanwhile, will be charged up. Completely wiped out in the last parliamentary and assembly polls, it will be looking at sustaining its momentum. Senior Congress leaders say they never hoped to win a single seat in the Lok Sabha polls, but having secured a 22.5% vote share, up from 15.2% in 2014 and 9.7 % in 2015, the party sees a great opportunity.
“Our performance shows that people of Delhi see Congress as the real alternative to BJP and AAP does not enjoy the same confidence. Those who voted for AAP in previous elections are coming back to us. In the 2020 assembly elections, Congress and BJP will be the main rivals and AAP will be wiped out,” said Delhi Congress spokesperson Jitender Kochhar.