SUMMER OF DISCONTENT
Congress’ strategy of fielding sitting MPs is unlikely to offer dividends in the citadel of citizen outrage
It is 11 a.m. and Kapil Sibal’s padyatra is winding its way through the congested lanes of old Delhi’s Ballimaran. Shops have just opened in the area renowned as the home of poet Mirza Ghalib. Sibal, a sort-of poet himself, waves at the people peering through tiny windows in rickety buildings and standing on wooden balconies. But today is not the time for poetry. Sibal stops to deliver an emotional pitch. “I have always stood for victims of Gujarat riots and I have taken on Modi. We came here from Pakistan and I worked hard to reach where I am today. No one can accuse me of taking even a single penny,” he says.
Sibal, the Union minister for law and justice and communications and IT, is fighting to retain Chandni Chowk, a seat he has won twice since 2004. It is here that the Capital’s fiercest electoral battle will be fought on April 10. “The minorities realise that he is not corrupt. Besides, he always helps those who go to him,” says Mohammad Naushad, a local resident who is a Youth Congress leader. There is, however, a discontent against Sibal which his challengers, BJP’s Harsh Vardhan and Aam Aadmi Party’s Ashutosh, hope to cash in on. “People are fed up of corruption and false promises,” says Ashutosh. “They are looking for an alternative. I am the only candidate getting support from all the communities.”
Harsh Vardhan, who led BJP’s unsuccessful bid for power in the 2013 Assembly elections, realises the significance of the community both his rivals are wooing: Muslims make up 14 per cent of voters in this constituency. He launched his campaign from the house he was born in in Muslim-dominated Fatak Teliyan at Turkman Gate. “I am the only native. Everyone else is an outsider,” he tells voters.
Chandni Chowk is a microcosm of Delhi’s Lok Sabha 2014 elections. The Capital, which has over 10 million voters, is poised to witness seven triangular contests as AAP seems determined to repeat its success of last December’s Assembly polls, notwithstanding the fact that it may have lost some of its middle-class support following the public shenanigans of its short-lived government. Residents of Masjid Moth, a middle-class locality in South Delhi, say they regret voting for AAP in 2013. “AAP has completely let us down,” says Pavan Khetarpal, 46, a chartered
accountant. “This time, we will vote for Modi.” This loss for AAP, which emerged as a direct result of citizen outrage in the Capital, may, however, be compensated by its dent in Congress’s traditional vote share among slum dwellers, labourers and minorities. That explains why the party has augmented its anti-corruption rhetoric by positioning itself against Modi. This tactic, it hopes, will bring Muslim votes. Members of the minority community say they will vote for whoever they feel is best positioned to defeat BJP. “Wait for some time,” says Muzaheed Ali, 28, a street vendor near Ghalib’s house in Chandni Chowk. “We will decide only at the last moment.”
The divided vote suits BJP. The India Today Group-Cicero opinion poll predicts a BJP wave in the Capital. The party is set to get 41 per cent votes, which would be between five seats and a possible repeat of its clean sweep in 1999. No less than 44 per cent voters surveyed said they wanted Modi as prime minister as against 24 per cent for Kejriwal and 19 per cent for Rahul Gandhi. Improving BJP’s prospects will be the fresh faces it has fielded; it has repeated only one candidate, Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi, from the last
Lok Sabha elections. And, like all other parties, BJP hasn’t ignored caste considerations, which will be at the heart of calculations in all constituencies except New Delhi and East Delhi. In Chandni Chowk, where Bania and Punjabi traders are 35 per cent of the electorate, BJP fielded a Bania in Harsh Vardhan, as did AAP in Ashutosh. In West Delhi, BJP has fielded Parvesh Verma, a Jat leader and son of former chief minister Sahib Singh Verma, to undo the mistake of 2009. Back then, Jats had deserted BJP after it denied the ticket to Parvesh. “My father was a doer as Modiji is. I want to continue his legacy,” says Verma. He faces a tough fight from AAP’s Jarnail Singh, a journalist who shot to fame after hurling a shoe at then home minister P. Chidambaram in 2009. AAP hopes Jarnail, who has championed the cause of victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, will sway Sikhs who make up 18 per cent of the constituency’s voters. Both Parvesh and Jarnail will take on sitting Congress MP Mahabal Mishra.
The Congress has repeated all its seven sitting MPs, risking a tsunami of anti-incumbency. While Jai Parkash Agarwal and Ajay Maken, MPs from North East Delhi and New Delhi, won primaries—where party workers voted to choose a candidate—to stand for re-election, caste forced the party’s hand in other constituencies. The leadership wanted to replace sitting MP Krishna Tirath from North West Delhi but couldn’t find a suitable Dalit woman candidate for a reserved seat where 21 per cent voters are Dalit. So she was renominated as soon as BJP fielded Dalit leader Udit Raj and AAP nominated its Mangolpuri MLA Rakhi Birla. Despite her claims to the contrary, Tirath’s low-profile campaign reflects a lack of confidence.
Caste considerations hobbled Congress’s choice even in South Delhi, the only other seat it wanted to change the candidate for. The party did a rethink when it realised that sitting MP Ramesh Kumar’s older brother Sajjan Kumar still has clout among Jats and Gujjars. Ramesh has spent only Rs 3.08 crore of his Rs 19 crore MPLADS fund and was placed 290th in India Today Group’s
Ranking of MPs. With no big achievement to showcase, he takes an easier route to woo voters—lash out at Modi. BJP chose Ramesh Bidhuri, its MLA from Tughlakabad, to take on Ramesh Kumar. Bidhuri belongs to the Gujjar community, the second largest in South Delhi, and enjoys support among local traders. “Vote for Modi if you want development. He will change your lives,” he tells voters. Bidhuri, however, has a tough contest on his hands: AAP, in a smart move, has fielded a Jat, Colonel Devinder Sehrawat, against him. Of the 42 villages in South Delhi, 18 are Jatdominated. “I want BJP to come to power but, as a Jat, I will never vote for Bidhuri, a Gujjar,” says Laxman Pawar, 39, a real estate agent in Ber Sarai.
In New Delhi and East Delhi, Ajay Maken and Sandeep Dikshit are fight- ing with their backs to the wall. Though Maken has a strong presence among the poorer sections and urban villages, he seems to have lost middle- and upper-class voters to BJP, which has fielded Meenakshi Lekhi, its very visible and voluble spokesperson. Lekhi hopes to not only make a dent in Maken’s support base but wean away disenchanted middle class voters who had supported AAP in December. “Maken is distributing pamphlets of his work done. You don’t need to read a pamphlet. Just visit the places and see the mess all around you. He has let down the people,” she says. AAP candidate Ashish Khetan relies on his party’s antigraft plank. “BJP only talks of Con- gress’s corruption. MCD, which is controlled by BJP, is the hub of corruption in Delhi,” he says, as he leads a jhaduchalao yatra around Delhi cantonment.
Dikshit is up against BJP’s Mahesh Giri, the former international director of Art of Living Foundation. His NGO, Nav Bharat Sewa Samiti, has worked on cleaning the Yamuna and runs health camps in East Delhi. AAP candidate Rajmohan Gandhi, at 78 the oldest candidate in the fray, brandishes his formidable USP: His supporters make it a point to remind one and all that he is Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson.
In North East Delhi, where 45 per cent voters are ‘Purvanchalis’ or migrants from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, regionalism counts more than caste. BJP has brought in Bhojpuri actor Manoj Tiwari to woo this huge vote bank while AAP has fielded JNU professor Anand Kumar, mainly because he is from Varanasi. Though Tiwari’s star appeal could sway voters, his party is worried he could be undone by the sizeable Muslim vote, which usually goes to the Congress. Indeed, two of the eight Assembly seats that the grand old party won in December were from here. For this election, its sitting MP Jai Parkash Agarwal has roped in his wife, two sons and daughters-inlaw to campaign for him. That may not be much help, for Agarwal has little to offer except an appeal to ignore AAP’s “false assurances” and stop “communal Modi” from coming to power. This, in fact, is true of all Congress candidates in the Capital. But will it work?