Congress relies on old guard for survival, BJP fields past winners and AAP plies minnows
After all the speculation, Delhi is finally poised for a three-way fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress and presents a smorgasbord of possibilities for the 17th Lok Sabha. Many would argue that neither the Congress nor the AAP can single-handedly defeat the BJP and given their overlapping votebases, could have stemmed the party that is running high on a nationalist surge. But Delhi, which is home to power players, bureaucracy and businesses, each of whom looks to extract their advantages, is a far more complex electoral game and plays by old rigidities at times. Therefore, some contend that a Congress-AAP alliance would still benefit the BJP and, in fact, crystallise a polarised vote as a section of the electorate that shifted from AAP to the Congress in the municipal elections, will switch back to the BJP as a more stable option. The BJP knows this and has, therefore, stuck to tested winners in Meenakshi Lekhi, Harsh Vardhan and Ramesh Bidhuri, throwing in a dollop of freshness with ex-cricketer Gautam Gambhir. In fact, it is the AAP-Congress dichotomy that would have kept both under severe pressure. Besides, the Assembly elections are due next year and the immediacy of a pitched battle after a national alliance would look ridiculously odd. The Congress for one is hell bent on taking State Governments one by one and in the process rebuilding the party’s base that has drifted. This is the reason why it has brought back old warhorse Sheila Dikshit to helm the party’s comeback trail, given her record of governance and some first-time policy changes that set the template for much of her rivals to improvise upon. AAP, though performing well on livelihood issues, public healthcare and education, has had an anti-incumbency slide among the traditional Congress voters who switched loyalties. Its constant quibbling with the Narendra Modi government at the Centre has also not gone down well with them. The municipal polls saw BJP get pole position with the Congress bubbling up. It is this dissatisfaction that the grand old party is trying to encash in finding its way back in Delhi. And if local elections can accelerate that process, the Congress would work for it now than chase an unsure national verdict. This explains why the Congress is not willing to risk its long-term term prospects with short-term expediency, considering it has had its influence in the city for decades and hopes to rescue that than cede its ground. However, the Congress must remember that AAP is more than just a disruptor, which came second in the Lok Sabha polls of 2014, won the state elections and reduced the Congress to a rump from the high of a seven-seat win in 2009. It has delivered on its promises and has had a progressive increase in its vote share that the Congress cannot wish away. Playing with this weakness, the Congress indeed would risk further decimation as a B-team in an alliance, having lost its upper caste and Sikh vote to the BJP in 2014, the Dalit, backward and a partial Muslim vote to the AAP. So the party, through the Lok Sabha list, has tried to unify warring factions and bring back disenchanted supporters.
It has got back Arvinder Singh Lovely, despite his switch to the BJP in between, given his decade-long hold in East Delhi and his “local” tag. AAP’s Atishi, who hopes to buttonhole him on his performance as education minister, is a minnow in these parts. And BJP’s Gambhir is expected to soothe local level creases with his popularity. In North East Delhi, a Purvanchali bastion with a sizeable Muslim voter chunk, Dikshit is expected to use her three-term weight as Chief Minister to tame BJP’s Manoj Tiwari. Ajay Maken, more than a tested hand, is being accommodated to stem dissent and has to face Lekhi yet again. Tickets to Mahabal Mishra in West Delhi and boxer Vijender Singh in South Delhi are targetted to get caste and community votes, the migrants in the former and Jats and Gurjars in the latter. Considering that the party does not even have a single MLA in the city, the Congress has a more serious crisis of identity in Delhi, bigger than seven Lok Sabha seats. Just as it is a survival challenge for AAP, which has bred on the broken Congress vote. The notional pride can wait. The triangular fight again gives BJP an opportunity to go for the home run.
