Devinder, a saffron topi -wearing man, helps voters find their polling booths in a Municipal Corporation school in the heart of Tughlakabad village on Thursday. Early in the day, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ramesh Bidhuri, the candidate from South Delhi, cast his vote in polling booth number 59 in the same school which was swarming with party workers.
Tughlakabad village, the stronghold of Mr. Bidhuri who is a four-time MLA from here, has 20 per cent first time voters, according to the BJP’s booth level workers. “None of these first-time voters needed to be convinced to vote for the BJP,” said Nitin Garg, wearing a ‘Save Water’ t-shirt. Water, interestingly, “was” an issue in this village. “But Mr. Bidhuri fixed all the water problems by bringing in tankers and bore-wells,” said Mr. Garg.
The absence of the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party workers in this village was conspicuous. The Gujjar dominated area depicts the close fight that has been played out over the last few weeks in the South Delhi parliamentary constituency, the result of the fight between Mr. Bidhuri and his Jat counterparts will be revealed when the votes get counted mid-May.
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Yet, with Mr. Bidhuri’s energies spent targeting his AAP opponent Col (retd.) Devinder Sehrawat and vice versa, the Congress’ Ramesh Kumar seemed absent from the rhetoric. “I have seen a very good sign in the constituencies I have visited. Among the poorer segments, people are very enthused about the AAP,” said Col. Sehrwat, who visited all the ten assembly constituencies under this parliamentary constituency.