Before the dust settled on the last day of campaigning for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi on Thursday, political parties and candidates pulled out all the stops to woo voters in the city that will go to polls on May 25.
The lead-up to the electoral battle in Delhi saw a direct face-off between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and INDIA bloc partners Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress, marking a departure from the usual triangular contest seen in the past 10 years. Both sides exuded confidence of winning all seven seats.
Also read: Delhi Lok Sabha Election 2024 LIVE updates, May 25, 2024
As candidates in their respective constituencies conducted rallies and roadshows, the battle boiled down to a contest between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The Congress, hoping for a resurgence in Delhi a decade after it was pushed out of the Capital by AAP, managed to convince its party workers that they were fighting a larger battle to save democracy and the Constitution by entering into an alliance with AAP.
The Congress and AAP are fighting the polls under a 3-4 seat-sharing pact. A total of 162 candidates are in the fray with the maximum contesting from the North East Delhi constituency.
AAP’s Raghav Chadha holds a roadshow for party’s East Delhi candidate Kuldeep Kumar at Patparganj on Wednesday. | Photo Credit: ANI
The BJP, in its campaign rallies, attacked the INDIA bloc highlighting how the two allies have been on the opposite ends of main issues since AAP came into existence. While it underlined the “failures” of the Congress during its several decades-long rule at the Centre, the party attacked AAP over local issues in Delhi. The INDIA bloc’s campaign was centred around defeating the BJP to “save democracy”.
The Opposition’s INDIA bloc blew the poll bugle with a massive rally at the Ramlila Maidan on March 31, with various alliance partners — Samajwadi Party, CPI(M), DMK, TMC, PDP, Shiv Sena (UBT) and JMM — sharing the stage.
Heightened pitch
The BJP heightened the pitch last week as Mr. Modi addressed two rallies in North East Delhi and West Delhi constituencies. Union Home Minister Amit Shah also addressed rallies in the city. On Thursday, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, and Piyush Goyal unleashed a last-day blitzkrieg.
Several Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled States, including Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), Pushkar Singh Dhami (Uttarakhand), and Pramod Sawant (Goa) also campaigned here to seek votes for the party’s nominees.
The BJP has held all seven seats for two consecutive terms. Hoping to wrest the seats, AAP and the Congress sought votes for ‘Jhadu’ (AAP’s party symbol) in New Delhi, South Delhi, West Delhi and East Delhi, and for ‘Haath’ (Congress’s symbol) in North West, North East and Chandni Chowk constituencies.
AAP’s poll campaign got a shot in the arm with the release of Mr. Kejriwal, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on March 21 in an excise policy-linked money laundering case, from Tihar Jail on interim bail.
While the AAP convener was in jail, his wife Sunita Kejriwal held roadshows for party candidates. Senior party leaders Atishi, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Sanjay Singh, and Gopal Rai held several public meetings under the party’s ‘Jail ka Jawab Vote se’ campaign.
The Congress, which came out in support of the Delhi CM, witnessed a backlash from a section of its leaders as former Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely announced his exit from the party over its choice of candidates and the decision to enter into an alliance with AAP. He later joined the BJP.
Charges against each other for running divisive campaigns were made by both sides, with the BJP leaders reminding people of the work they have done at the Centre in the last 10 years, and AAP and the Congress raising issues of unemployment and inflation.
As local issues struggled to find a place in the poll narrative, Mr. Shah, in a rally, promised to work towards regularising all unauthorised colonies by 2026 in the Capital, if voted back to power. AAP and the Congress promised full statehood for Delhi if INDIA bloc forms the government at the Centre.
Delhi has a total of 1,52,01,936 voters.
