Modi to campaign in Delhi

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will kick-start his Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign for the upcoming Delhi assembly elections next month.

Projections that BJP may be headed to a comfortable victory in Delhi state legislative assembly elections notwithstanding, the BJP does not want to take chances and has decided to field its star campaigner even before the Election Commission announces poll schedule.

Modi is expected to address at least four rallies in the metropolis that elects 70 lawmakers to the state assembly. He will address his first rally on January 10 at Ramlila Maidan in central Delhi. All BJP chief ministers including the just installed Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das and senior leaders of Jammu and Kashmir are also slated to address the January 10 rallies.

BJP president Amit Shah has taken direct control of the state unit due to the continued infighting of local leaders and failure of BJP’s seven Delhi Members of Parliament to draw crowds at their pre-poll rallies.

BJP has wrested power from arch-rival Congress party and its allies in three states — Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand — that went to polls after BJP swept to power at the centre under Modi’s leadership in May. BJP continues to be in striking distance from forming an alliance government in Jammu and Kashmir, which elected a hung assembly last week after merging the second-largest party with highest popular votes.

BJP has emerged as the largest party in the hung Delhi assembly in December last year, but fell three seats short of the majority. Debutant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) formed the government with the outside support of the Congress party and quit after being in power for 49 days in February this year. Since then, Delhi has been under the President’s rule and the hung assembly was dissolved in November.

Election Commission is expected to formally announce the schedule for Delhi polls in the first week of January while polling may take place in February.

Unlike last year’s elections when BJP had projected the now federal cabinet minister Harsh Vardhan as its chief ministerial candidate, the party would not project anyone as its chief ministerial candidate. Instead, it will seek votes in Modi’s name as it did in all four states that went to polls in the recent past.

One of the reasons for this is lack of a credible popular leader who can take on AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal. AAP has already announced more than 60 candidates and is campaigning aggressively. BJP’s plan is to make it a direct contest between Modi and Kejriwal, who headed the AAP government and failed miserably against Modi in parliamentary polls for Varanasi’s seat in Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the Congress party, which ruled Delhi for 15 years has finalised its first list of 20 candidates. The list includes names of all its eight leaders who won last year, the lone Janata Dal (United) lawmaker Shoji Irbil who has joined the Congress party, and 11 other prominent leaders including some former ministers.

The list was finalised at the Congress Central Election Committee meeting held on Saturday and was chaired by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. Though the list has not been formally made public, the leaders who passed the scrutiny have been instructed to start campaigning in their respective constituencies.

The list does not include name of thrice chief minister Sheila Dikshit who was defeated by Kejriwal from New Delhi assembly constituency last year. Dikshit has informed the party that she does not want to return to electoral politics.