Populist, ‘common man’ parties vie in New Delhi

NEW DELHI — Residents of India’s capital voted Saturday in a crucial state election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party sought to regain power after a 22-year gap and major victories in a national vote.

About 57% of the 14.6 million registered voters lined up in queues across New Delhi to cast ballots, India’s election commission said.

Results will be declared Tuesday.

The polls pit Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party against the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party, or “common man’s” party, whose pro-poor policies have focused on fixing state-run schools and providing free health care and bus fares for women during the five years in power.

The Bharatiya Janata Party campaign treated the election as a referendum on nearly two months of protests across India against a new citizenship law that excludes Muslims.

The law fast-tracks naturalization for non-Muslim migrants from neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who are living in the country illegally. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party also hopes to garner Hindu votes for ending semi-autonomy of Muslim-majority Kashmir last summer and turning the disputed region into two federally governed territories amid security lockdown.

Both of those actions have won him praise from supporters but little reward at the polls. Bharatiya Janata Party lost two important state elections last year.

“They [Bharatiya Janata Party] must be given a jolt. We are poor, but we are also humans. They only talk about divisions,” said Shabnam Mukhtar, a housewife at Shaheen Bagh, a working-class neighborhood where Muslim women have staged a sit-in for two months to protest the

citizenship law.

Ehtashamul Haque, a businessman, said the Aam Aadmi Party “only has development on their mind” in comparison to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“People should vote for development,” he said.

Surveys by television news channels predicted a clear victory for the Aam Aadmi Party in the 70-member state assembly. The Congress, a distant third party, has run a lackluster campaign and is expected to fare poorly.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was voted out of power in New Delhi in 1998 by the Congress party, which had run the government for 15 years. In the 2015 elections, the Aam Aadmi Party won a landslide victory by capturing 67 of 70 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party could win only three seats despite winning the 2014 national elections.

(AP/Manish Swarup) An elderly Muslim man shows the indelible ink mark on his finger after casting his vote Saturday at a polling station in the old quarters of New Delhi.