5 reasons why BJP could lose Delhi

The BJP has tried all tricks in the book to win Delhi, from announcing regularisation of slum colonies to paradropping Kiran Bedi in the State unit to making political capital of the Obama visit, but nothing seems to be working for it at the moment.

What exactly did go wrong in the BJP’s calculation? Here are five reasons why BJP will find it hard to get majority in the Delhi assembly elections:

Kiran Bedi as CM face
Since the day party chief Amit Shah declared her as the CM candidate, the state unit has been witnessing discontent within. Though many senior party leaders in Delhi have dismissed talk of resentment against the decision, the lack of involvement among the workers and party is visible. In addition to that, the former IPS officer despite being a popular personality in the city, has barely managed to pull any crowd at her rallies.

Unfair ticket distribution
If naming Bedi as the CM candidate wasn’t bad enough, the situation between the party leaders and the workers got worse with the party inviting and encouraging former Congress and AAP leaders to contest instead of their own. East Delhi is facing the worst outrage with former Congress MP Krishna Tirath, former AAP MLAs Vinod Kumar Binny and MS Dhir and Okhla candidate Brahma Singh Bidhuri, who defected from the Bahujan Samaj Party.

“We have so many local leaders who have been relentlessly working for the party for decades. Residents here love them and would definitely support them. Then what is the point to getting defected candidates of other parties,” a BJP district president from East Delhi, said.

Saffron self-goal
The activities of the Hindutva forces, so far seen as the secret ally of the BJP, have made it progressively worse for the party since it came to power last year. Be it Union Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti’s controversial comment “Ramzada or Haramzada” or BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh Sakshi Maharaj’s accusations about madarsas teaching terrorism to a number of communal comments by the RSS leaders. All of this is likely to have alienated urban population of Delhi in addition to causing loss in terms of minority votes, including 12 per cent Muslim and 2 per cent Christian votes.

AAP workforce
To make matters worse for the BJP, the Aam Aadmi Party cadre has a two-month head start over the BJP when it comes to campaigning at the ground level. In addition to that, the AAP has also mobilised workers from other states. Thousands of AAP members have come to Delhi from Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Punjab and Haryana to assist the party in the Delhi elections. Their innovative campaigning style is not only getting the attention of the public but also diminishing the Modi wave.

Opinion polls favouring AAP
Though the ABP-Nielsen opinion poll in November last year gave BJP a clear majority estimating that the party would win 46 seats out of 70 in the upcoming assembly elections, a lot seems to have changed since then. A more recent pre-poll survey, conducted by Hindustan Times and C Fore Survey revealed that AAP may have caught up in the rat race. According to the survey, AAP’s vote share has gone up by 9 per cent from 24.9 per cent in the 2013 assembly elections, the party is estimated to get 33.9 per cent in the upcoming one.

Meanwhile, the BJP has only managed to raise their vote share by 5 per cent bringing them from 33 per cent in 2013 to 38 per cent in 2015. Though, it may still be higher than AAP’s vote share, but a lot could change in the next week or so.

The interesting aspect to take into account is that in both the opinion polls, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has stood out to be the city’s favourite among all chief minister candidates. In the ABP-Nielsen opinion poll, 39 per cent of Delhi’s electorate wanted AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal as the next chief minister, highest amongst his competitors. Similarly, the C Fore Survey also revealed that 43 per cent of Delhiites want Kejriwal as their next CM, while 39 per cent want Bedi and 12 per cent want the Congress candidate Ajay Maken.

By: Shibaji Roychoudhury