Keen fight on cards as Delhi goes to polls today

The Aam Aadmi Party, which rode on the back of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign in 2012 and got its first shot at government the next year, is pulling all stops to return to power on claims of governance, but BJP’s high-pitched campaign on national issues has made the election a high-octane contest. Before the elections were announced last month, it was widely felt that the AAP held an edge in the race on the basis of governance and the highly-populist schemes like free power, water, bus rides for women and reform of school education system among other things. AAP, which had a short-lived stint with outside support from Congress in 2013, romped back home with an overwhelming majority in the 2015 polls. The party won 67 of the 70 seats, leaving just 3 for BJP. The Congress, which under Shiela Dikshit, won three elections from 1998, drew a blank.

While the AAP is contesting all the 70 seats now, the BJP has fielded candidates in 67 and the Congress in 66. Both the national parties have left the remaining seats to their allies. By all accounts, the AAP was seen to be in the pole position for the current elections till the BJP, which lost power in Delhi in 1998 and has not been able to win after that, seemingly made the current elections a referendum on the decisions of the government at the Centre. Virtually relegating local issues to the back-burner, the BJP has sought to make the election a prestigious battle on the enactment of the CAA to give citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.