BJP opts for fresh polls in Delhi
Plans to form government by engineering defection in other parties dropped
New Delhi: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to push for fresh polls in Delhi to break the political deadlock in the provincial assembly.
This brings curtains on the weeklong effort to manage a majority in the hung Delhi legislative assembly by engineering defections from the ranks of its national arch-rival Congress party.
Reportedly, six out of the Congress party’s eight lawmakers were ready to rebel and help BJP cross the majority mark.
The decision to drop the plan is a direct result of snubs by prime minister Narendra Modi and Mohan Bhagwat — chief of the party’s parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
In all likelihood fresh polls will be ordered in Delhi in December to insulate the party form any negative impact from the outcome in Delhi on crucial assembly elections in the opposition-ruled Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
The move to form government in Delhi had started after Satish Upadhyay was named new state unit president of BJP. While the central leadership of the party was sceptical of the bad name the party may get by engineering majority, BJP’s newly installed national president Amit Shah had deferred a final decision until consultations with prime minister Modi and the RSS.
While Modi rejected the idea outright, RSS chief Bhagwat is believed to have told Shah to stop entertaining such thoughts when he called on the RSS chief at its Nagpur headquarters on Friday.
BJP had emerged the single largest party in the hung 70-member Delhi elections held in December last year by winning 31 seats while its ally Shiromani Akali Dal had won one. This left them three seats short of the majority mark. The party declined invitation of Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to form the government saying it did not have the numbers on its side.
Debutant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which had emerged second largest party behind BJP with 28 seats formed the government with outside support of the Congress party. However, the AAP government led by Arvind Kejriwal opted to quit after being in power for 49 days on February 14. Ever since then Delhi is under President’s rule.
BJP is banking on forming governments in Maharashtra and Jharkhand and is hopeful of a positive result in Haryana also to spread is wings following its exceptional show in the May general elections.
However, the party leadership is not sure how Delhi voters would react even though the party had emerged victorious on all seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi.
AAP which ostensibly quit to focus on national elections had since decided to concentrate on Delhi and not contest elections in Haryana and Maharashtra. The party is believed to have regained the lost ground mainly due to failure of the Modi government to rein in rising prices of essential commodities.
Under the circumstances, BJP does not want to risk polls in Delhi ahead of the three other states while hoping that electoral promise of Modi to bring good days will start showing results by December.
