After being unable to win the Delhi Assembly polls since its magnificent victory under Madan Lal Khurana in 1993, the Bharatiya Janata Party appears to have wrested the advantage in the ongoing elections, pushing the Aam Aadmi Party on the defensive.
However, while the saffron brigade, on the strength of its better organizational ability and superior booth management, is in a position from where it can reach the podium easily, it does not mean that the battle is over and the AAP has given up. The goal is still far away and much can happen between then and now.
Arvind Kejriwal is an astute politician, who can make a comeback of sorts even though the perception is not in his favour and many of his supporters have written him off. There is always a difference between perception and reality and what is being projected by the media, does not necessarily mean would happen in the same manner at the grassroots level on voting day.
It needs to be remembered that even in 2020, till the very last, the expectations were that the BJP would score a convincing victory. However, the situation changed, resulting in yet another spectacular victory for the broom. This is an election where the final outcome does depend to some degree on how the Congress, the third player in the triangle, performs.
Contrary to the general calculation that if the Congress does well, it would help the BJP, it is the other way around. If the grand old party is able to secure 10% of votes, it would be AAP that would be the beneficiary, since the Congress would be eating into anti-AAP votes, thus denying votes which could have gone to the BJP.
The Congress campaign has been aggressive and is likely to gain momentum once Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka also get into the act in a serious and big way. Nevertheless, its weakness lies in the fact that it has a very poor organizational network, and could collapse as it has been doing, on the polling day. Its problem lies in its non-existent micro management at the booth level and this is where the answer to the final result of the 2025 election lies.
The fact of the matter is that the Congress is in the combat in at least 14 out of 70 seats and if it can secure a victory in even one or two, it would be on the path of making a recovery. In the past two elections, the Congress was unable to open its account and things may be no different this time, if the final day arrangements lack the seriousness.
Congress leaders are aware that in order to retrieve the lost position, it is important to vanquish AAP, which has taken the political space which once belonged to their party. That is the reason why its top functionaries, Ajay Maken in particular, have been gunning for Kejriwal, something which has made the I.N.D.I.A bloc allies unhappy. But it needs to be understood that there is no alternative for the Congress but to attack AAP.
This is an election where there are multiple ironies. The objective of the BJP and the Congress, the two parties, which are poles apart so far as ideology goes, is similar. Both want the AAP to be packed off, something which is never going to be easy. For the Congress, Kejriwal needs to be reminded that what he did in Haryana, Goa and Gujarat was against the spirit of the I.N.D.I.A bloc and thus he has to suffer the consequences of all that in Delhi.
The difficulties of AAP have arisen, primarily because it had been victorious in the municipal polls by wresting control from the BJP which had been in power. The reality is that the civic body plays a greater role in the lives of the common man as compared to the Delhi government, which in any case runs with the sanction of the Centre, which has overriding control over its functioning.
As long as the MCD was with the BJP, the AAP could turn around and attack the saffron brigade on its dismal showing. Things have changed and now the AAP is finding it difficult to defend its brief tenure in the civic body where its performance leaves a lot to be desired. It does not have the luxury of shifting the blame while its own City Fathers are at the receiving end.
What has also gone wrong for the AAP, according to some of its staunchest supporters, is that the moment Kejriwal resigned and handed over the reins of his position to Atishi Singh, he squandered the advantage he had as the Chief Minister. Sandeep Dikshit has already raised an arguable point that even if the AAP wins, Kejriwal cannot be the CM, given the bail conditions laid down by the Supreme Court. While this is for the legal eagles to figure out, the fact remains that even the AAP cannot claim confidently that it has a CM face, while ridiculing the BJP and the Congress on that count.
There is a numerological angle to the polls as well. Like in Haryana, the polling dates are on the 5th and the counting on the 8th, considered to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lucky number by many of his followers. Everything major Modi does, has the figure 8, as was evident when the demonetization took place. The BJP is in the pole position. Between us.