The third player in the triangular contest for power in Delhi, the Indian National Congress, is looking forward to launching a campaign focused on a range of national and local issues and is promising to continue the development it brought to Delhi during its 15-year rule with Sheila Dikshit as Chief Minister.
Enthused by its results in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when it managed to increase its vote share considerably and was placed second in five out of the seven seats, the party leadership is confident of turning around its performance in the Assembly polls. In 2013 Delhi Assembly elections, the Congress had won eight out of 70 seats and in the 2015 polls, it failed to win even a single seat.
After a leadership crisis arose in the Delhi Congress following the death of Dikshit in July last year, the party relied on old warhorse Shubhash Chopra to become the State unit chief and put up a united front against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Mr. Chopra said that the party through its campaign will not only remind Delhiites of how the Congress party in its 15-year rule brought a positive transformation to the Capital, but also debunk the lies and misinformation that both BJP and AAP have been spreading on regularisation of unauthorised colonies and the development they claim they have brought.
“Both parties are making promises ahead of the elections but are yet to deliver and we will show voters that it is only the Congress party that has work to show,” he said. The Congress is looking to field young candidates in the upcoming polls, Mr. Chopra added.
‘No CAA, NPR, NRC’
One of the first announcements that the Delhi Congress made regarding its preparations for the elections was to come out with a clear stand on the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). The chairman of the Manifesto Committee, Ajay Maken, said that the party if elected to power in Delhi, will not implement the CAA, NPR and NRC.
“While the manifesto committee is still working on it, one of the main points included in the document would be the party’s stand that there is a vast difference in the NPR of 2010 and the NPR of 2020 as the Modi government has added six new illegal clauses in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution,” Mr. Maken said. The party has also asked AAP to clear its stand on the issue and not stay on the fences.
Congress leaders have been reaching out to those protesting against the CAA-NPR-NRC and have even shown solidarity with students’ movement against the exercise.
Launching an initiative to listen to the people of Delhi on what should be included in the manifesto, the Congress has started a conversation with Delhiites. Kicking off the initiative, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, “The stifling of dissent and attacks on university campuses in the Capital has given us the sense that the government is trying to silence the voice of the people of Delhi and therefore, we are going to welcome the voices and consult them on what they think should be the key issues in this election,” Mr. Tharoor said.
He said that in every election the BJP fights, its intent is to polarise voters and hoped that in Delhi any such attempt, like the attack on students of JNU, will be resisted by voters who are aware and educated. “The Congress will ensure that any attempt to take the public’s attention away from the failures of the government with regard to economy, unemployment, pollution and every single aspect of improving the life of the people will not be tolerated,” Mr. Tharoor said.
Campaign slogan
The chairman of the Campaign Committee of the Delhi Congress, Kirti Azad, said that the campaign slogans which have been finalised are — ‘Congress wali Dilli Khushal Dilli’ and ‘Congress ke 15 saal vikas hue bemisaal”, which is a throwback to the 15-year rule of the Congress in Delhi when it completely changed the face of the city.
“We are fighting a war and we will have an aggressive strategy. We will have posters reminding people that it was the Congress that built the metro, new hospitals, flyovers and schools and these development works will be compared to the work that AAP has done in terms of numbers to show how it has not done any development,” Mr. Azad said. To counter the BJP, he said the strategy would be simple, “we will get them to talk about issues facing Delhi and not about Pakistan”.
Regularisation ‘truth’
Mr. Azad said that one of the main strategies to target the BJP and AAP would be unauthorised colonies as both parties have “fooled” the people of Delhi. “There was a notification by the Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi on October 2, 2013 saying that the mapping of the unauthorised colonies should start. Unfortunately after that we lost the elections and the Kejriwal government did not start the process. Two agencies were appointed to map them and both tenders were cancelled and for four-and-a-half years, Kejriwal was in deep slumber. Only before the elections did he wake up to it. We will go to unauthorised colonies and tell them the truth about this,” Mr. Azad said.
With respect to the BJP’s “regularisation” of unauthorised colonies, he said that the Congress will hold rallies in unauthorised colonies and show how a majority of them would not be regularised as they fall in zones like the Yamuna riverbed, near ASI monuments, forest areas and near high-tension cables, because of which, according to the government’s rules, they cannot be regularised.
Power ‘relief’
Other promises that the Congress has made ahead of the election is to give relief package up to 600 units of power to the consumers besides increasing the pension amount to ₹5,000 per month under the ‘Sheila Dikshit Pension Scheme’.
The party has also set up a social media unit to “debunk falsehood and lies” that they said the BJP and AAP have been spreading.
Several Delhi Congress workers said that unlike in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, where there was a lot of ambiguity until the last day of filing nominations as to whether the party would tie-up with AAP to counter the BJP, this time the preparations are much more organised.
“Last year, there was a division within the party on a tie-up and therefore, we started our campaign very late. Even then, we managed to improve our performance. The ground-level workers are positive and are looking to rebuild the party and win back our vote base. Successful campaigns in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have also brought a new vigour,” a party worker said.
