The South India Times
(Spcl Correspondent)
New Delhi: Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party (AAP) has stalled the mighty Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from retaining the power of the second-largest Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for the fourth time. The BJP had been ruling the MCD for the past 15 years.
AAP has managed to cross the halfway mark by winning 134, up by 49 by polling 42 percent vote share, in the 250-strong civic body.
And, the BJP managed win just 104, as against 181 wards it won in 2017, but improved its vote share by four percent – 35 to 39. And the Congress almost got decimated as it could just win 9 wards getting 11 percent, while independents just three. As a result, senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi expressed his concern over party’s most pathetic performance in the MCD polls.
Though, the BJP won 104, its leaders started tweeting “Mayor Hamara” hai. Well, the Delhi Lieutenant Governor (L-G), who reports to the Centre, the BJP-led government in the current case, is authorised to nominate 12 councillors to the MCD. Yet, can arithmetic favor BJP. More unlikely as the BJP has won just 104 and even that 12 nominated are added the number may end up around 116. Even if the 9 members of Congress and three independents back BJP nominee still it still fall short of the magic figure to outwit AAP’s 134.
Incidentally, the pollsters, who projected AAP sweeping the polls by winning 160-170 seats, seem to have got a tight slap. Now many a political analyst ponders whether the pollsters, who projected the BJP of sweeping the Gujarat polls and scrape through in Himachal, to go for a six. The results of the two states, where polls were for the assembly, will be announced tomorrow.
Though the AAP might have managed to win the Delhi MCD polls, their claims of winning 220-230 seats fall flat on their face. They boasted of the BJP not even getting 20 seats.
Against that backdrop, the AAP which also stakes claim to emerge as the only alternative to the BJP at the national level depends much on how much of a vote share it can garner in the states where it wanted people to believe in sweeping – yes, in Gujarat as well as n Himachal Pradesh. What if it failed to draw a blank in both the states of its results will be out tomorrow as in the case of UP or Uttarakhand or Manipur or Goa in the past, despite media hype?
However, as saying goes “Jo jeetha, wahi sikhander’, the AAP has every reason to celebrate for dethroning the BJP from MCD to take total control of the national capital, including having its own Mayor for the first time.
AAP cannot ignore the fact that its nominees lost in the wards that come under the imprisoned minister Satyendra Jain in the money laundering case and the tainted deputy chief minister of Delhi and Kejriwal’s trusted lieutenant, Manish Sisodia, in the multi-crore liquor policy scam. Not to forget that the AAP election campaign was led by Sisodia.
On the other hand, the BJP admits that they have no iconic local figures of the past like Madanlal Khurana or Sushma Swaraj, who could have challenged the successful ‘media managee’ Kejriwal.
