The Delhi Assembly elections are still a month away, but Aam Aadmi Party candidate from R.K. Puram Shazia Ilmi has already ruffled some feathers. The Congress is thinking about fielding a “stronger” candidate against Ms. Ilmi, instead of sitting MLA Barkha Singh.
“The most difficult campaigning has been in the slum clusters. It is very difficult to break the longstanding patronage networks in the jhuggis, through which the Congress and the BJP ensure votes,” says the former journalist.
Adjusting her cap while sitting at the party’s makeshift office in Vasant Vihar, she says, 32,000 of the 1,27,000 votes in the constituency come from the slum clusters.
On the campaign trail, she points towards the slum clusters in Mohammadpur area and says: “We made sure to campaign among women in the slums, asking them whether they wanted a future for their children or booze and money just before the polling day. We got a substantial amount of success”.
The local goons of the two mainstream parties have threatened AAP supporters in jhuggis , says Ms. Ilmi.
R.K. Puram’s demography is quite diverse, points out Ms. Ilmi. “On the one hand, we have several villages like Munirka and on the other, many government employee quarters. Then we have slum clusters. Finally, we have several influential colonies like Satya Niketan and Vasant Kunj.”
Going by conventional political wisdom, Ms. Ilmi ought to have been a candidate from a Muslim-majority constituency like Matia Mahal, Ballimaran or Okhla.
But she is contesting from a predominantly ‘Hindu area’, with Muslims forming around four per cent of the electorate.
‘Modern citizen’
“I think people see me as secular, progressive, modern and a regular citizen, rather than somebody with a religious identity,” she says.
Women’s safety is a big issue for Ms. Ilmi because the December 16 gang-rape happened in the constituency. In fact, Ms. Ilmi points out, it is one of the reasons she decided to contest against Ms. Singh, who heads the Delhi Commission for Women.
“I wanted to make a statement on gender justice. On the one hand, the sitting MLA heads the DCW and on the other hand, the horrific December 16 gang-rape took place in her own constituency, with two of the rapists — Ram Singh and Mukesh Singh — coming from the same area. All of this is a big statement on the mess which the Congress has created in Delhi,” she argues.
Confident of her chances, Ms. Ilmi says she will get votes from every demographic because her party has been raising citizen-centric issues that concern everybody.
A large chunk of first-time voters will also vote for her, says the alumna of the University of Wales, Cardiff.
She says the challenge for her party is to ensure good voting percentages among the ‘influential’ voters. She says “slum politics” means the voting percentage in slum clusters is around 90 per cent.
