2017 Delhi Civic Polls - BJP lining up all-star cast for Delhi civic polls

Seeking to exact revenge for its humiliating loss in the Delhi Assembly elections of 2015, the BJP is leaving no stone unturned ahead of the civic body polls lined up next month.

The party, fresh from stellar victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, has a star cast of campaigners including Yogi Adityanath and eight other State Chief Ministers, besides all top Union Cabinet Ministers.

The list of campaigners announced by the BJP’s Delhi unit has top Central ministers Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Smriti Irani and others, besides Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his counterparts from other States including Rajasthan’s Vasundhara Raje, Madhya Pradesh’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Maharashtra’s Devendra Fadnavis, Jharkhand’s Raghubar Das, Chhattisgarh’s Raman Singh, Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar and even the UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya.

“We have prepared this list keeping in mind the fact that Delhi is a mega city which houses people from all parts of the country. Besides local issues, voters here are influenced by politics of the States to which they belong. Our campaigners have been picked to appeal to regional sentiments as well as political issues dominating in a metropolis like Delhi,” said local BJP leaders Rajiv Babbar and Ravindra Gupta while releasing the list. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi was trifurcated into North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations in 2012. The North and South corporations have 104 wards each, while the East Delhi Municipal Corporation has 64 wards. The last municipal elections were held in 2012 and the BJP won the highest number of seats – 59 out of 104 wards in the North, 44 out of 104 in the South and 39 out of 64 in the East Delhi Municipal Corporation.

Successive setbacks

However, the BJP’s sway over the corporations has not been matched by any success in the Assembly polls where, after three consecutive victories of the Congress, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP swept to power in 2015. The BJP could win only three of the total 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly and suffered a reversal of fortunes in civic bypolls held subsequently. Of a total of 13 seats for which bypolls were held in May 2015, the AAP won five and the Congress made a comeback with four. The BJP was pushed to the third place.

Aggressive plans

Guiding the BJP’s strategy is its National President Amit Shah, who held two critical meetings with the Delhi leaders, cadre and a core team of Union Ministers last Sunday. The message in these meetings was clear – “Discredit the AAP by showing that they have lost people’s faith through the municipal elections”.

For the purpose, an aggressive campaign has been mounted. All sitting councillors against whom anti-incumbency has set in are being denied tickets.