history-repeating-itself-in-new-delhi

History appears to be repeating itself in the New Delhi assembly segment, where Aam Aadmi Party convener and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is faced with the toughest battle of his life. 

 

It looks like Kejriwal is placed in a similar situation like Sheila Dikshit in 2013. 

 

Kejriwal dethroned Dikshit from her stronghold, she was representing for 15 years, that too as the most successful and popular Chief Minister of the national capital. She had a long list of visible achievements to her credit like the massive infrastructure of flyovers and Delhi metro. 

 

Notwithstanding the narrative of corruption that the India Against Corruption (IAC), the AAP’s previous avatar built up, there were no charges of personal corruption against her. 

 

She lost by a massive margin of 25,864 votes. While Kejriwal polled 44,269, Dikshit got 18405 in 2013.

 

Kejriwal repeated the feat in 2015 and 2020 also, winning by impressive margins, while leaving his challengers far behind.

 

However, much water has flown down the polluted river Yamuna since then. Kejriwal has been there for 12 years and so has been his party’s government.

 What ailed Dkishit and her government in 2013, is troubling Kejriwal and his government now. Kejriwal has an added disadvantage. He is pitched against a powerful political and election machinery of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

 

This time Kejriwal is faced with a dual challenge from the BJP and the Congress. Both parties have fielded their best bets against him in New Delhi. While the Congress has fielded Sandeep Dikshit, the BJP has fielded Parvesh Verma.

Sandeep Dikshit is the son of Sheila Dikshit. He is a former MP. 

 

Verma is also a former MP and the son of a former Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma. 

 

Both are giving Kejriwal a run for his money. While Dikshit is a better organiser, suave and sober, Verma, relatively younger of the three, is an aggressive campaigner supported by a powerful party organisation.

 

Thirteen years is too long a time not to generate any anti-incumbency. Besides, the AAP and its leaders are no longer free from the corruption taint. The excise policy scam, which the AAP has been repeatedly and strongly denying, has been haunting them this time. Both Kejriwal and his deputy, Manish Sisodia have remained in jail over the alleged scam. Both the BJP and the Congress leaders have been repeatedly referring to the “excise scam” in their campaign speeches against the AAP, Kejriwal in particular.

 

Except for the freebies that the AAP provided, which mostly benefited the downtrodden and those living in the slums, the (AAP) government has not much to its credit. It did not add any infrastructure to Delhi. Instead, the infrastructure that was built before it came to power in Delhi has been crying for maintenance. The broken roads and the highest levels of pollution have put the AAP on defensive.

Yamuna pollution has been the greatest challenge for Kejriwal. He had promised to clean the river in five years and even said that he will drink Yamuna’s water and also take bath in it. 

 

Yamuna’s water is more polluted today than it was five years ago. Besides, the air quality has also been progressively deteriorating. Prior to forming a government in Punjab in 2022, Kejriwal would blame the Punjab farmers for the October/November pollution, which he attributed to the stubble burning. Now he has been left without any excuse to blame anyone. 

 

In the past, the freebies were his exclusive domain. Now both the BJP and the Congress have promised similar freebies. They have been providing freebies in the states ruled by them. Besides, no less a leader than the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself promised that none of the freebies will be stopped if the BJP comes to power. 

 

Kejriwal’s another challenge comes from the BJP’s added focus on the slum areas, which has been his (Kejriwal’s) stronghold in all these elections. The BJP has been using all the tricks in the trade to woo those voters and is understood to have made deep inroads. Coupled with the middle class support the BJP enjoys already, it is going to be the real challenge for the AAP supremo.

 

Besides, the massive tax relief announced by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget, raising the Income Tax limit to ₹12 lakhs, is likely to carry positive impact in favour of the BJP which will further boost its support among the middle class sections. 

 

And in case Congress’ Sandeep Dikshit manages to reclaim even 10-15 percent of the support his mother used to get in the constituency, things may be very difficult for Kejriwal. It might well end up to be Kejriwal’s Dikshit moment. Dikshit lost after 15 years of serving as the Chief Minister despite having been credited with a lot of development.