The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi has tactfully fielded Scheduled Caste candidate Kuldeep Kumar for an unreserved seat in East Delhi for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. The Delhi Chief Minister and AAP leader, Arvind Kejriwal, tweeted that “only AAP is fulfilling Baba Sahib’s dream.”
However, this has very little to do with what he said, but more to do with the political permutations and combinations. The seat in question in the East Delhi has around 15% SC voters and AAP is trying to woo them. East Delhi has been a bastion of the BJP since the Jan Sangh days, and the BJP has a strong hold on the seat.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP’s Gautam Gambhir won the seat by a huge margin of more than three lakh votes, defeating Congress’s Arvinder Lovely and AAP’s candidate, who stood third. AAP has been eyeing the SC votes for a long time and performed well in the assembly elections. AAP faced a tough challenge from the BJP, which bagged over 50% votes in 2019 in general election.
Despite constantly targeting women voters, AAP government has not declared any women candidates yet. The announced candidates include Somnath Bharti from New Delhi, Sahi Ram Pehelwan from South Delhi, and Mahabal Mishra from West Delhi, while Sushil Gupta has a lone seat in Kurukshetra, Haryana.
The AAP-Congress alliance in Delhi is heavily dependent on anti-incumbency votes; however, the BJP is known to plan on pro-incumbency votes, a strategy that was executed in the elections of M.P., Rajasthan, and Chattisgarh. AAP, on the other hand, is trying to execute its strategy of the Punjab elections to capitalise on opposition votes, but here in Delhi during the 2019 elections, the candidates who won have a margin of more than 50%, which is difficult to cross given the condition of an absolute vote transfer of Congress to AAP, which is a bit tricky due to the aggressive campaigning, welfarism by the BJP, and PM Modi’s face.
As a strategy to reach the voters in Delhi, the AAP will focus on its governance record in Delhi, especially in the sectors of education, health, water, electricity, and environment, and highlight its achievements and initiatives, such as the mohalla clinics, the doorstep delivery of services, the free bus rides for women, the installation of CCTV cameras, etc.
The AAP will also target the BJP for its failures and mismanagement at the Centre, such as the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic slowdown, the rising inflation, the farmers’ protest, the CAA-NRC issue, the unemployment crisis, etc. While the BJP will focus on such issues through social media marketing as well as reach out to voters, highlighting the schemes that the opposition calls the BJP’s failure.