The Hindu : New Delhi News : Triangular fights ahead in Delhi

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Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
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New Delhi

Triangular fights ahead in Delhi

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

Bahujan Samaj Party set to contest all the 70 Delhi Assembly seats at stake

Trust vote result to impact Delhi poll scenario
Mayawati to woo Muslim vote

NEW DELHI: The trust vote victory by the Manmohan Singh Government in Parliament may have delayed the Lok Sabha polls by a few more months but by all indications it is not going to severely impact the poll scene in the Capital which is in for Delhi Assembly elections later this year.

While the Congress is in a celebratory mood and the BJP is figuring out how so many of its members went against the party whip, there is no such difference in the moods in the Delhi camps of the two parties.

The Congress leader are definitely feeling on top of the world for the moment. But at the back of their mind they now also realise that in the Delhi Assembly elections they would face an even bigger challenge from Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party.

“The BSP has already announced its candidates for nearly 60 seats in Delhi. In the selection of these candidates, the party has taken care of two aspects.

One, they should be financially well off; and, two, they should be eager to invest in their respective constituencies. Already the results have started showing and the blue flags of the party with the elephant embellished on them can be seen in many slum clusters, unauthorised colonies and rehabilitation pockets of the city now,” said a concerned Congress leader on Wednesday.

The bitter defeat in Parliament and the feeling that the UPA and the NDA got together to deprive a Dalit, Mayawati, of the opportunity of becoming a Prime Minister might now mean that the BSP would fight for all the 70 seats at stake in the coming Delhi Assembly elections. Since the party has been steadily increasing its vote share and is now all set to woo the Muslim vote too on account of its stand against the nuclear deal, it is expected to play a major role by dividing the “secular and scheduled caste votes” that earlier went to the Congress.

“Obviously, this time round various senior Congress leaders who have been retaining their Assembly seats for years on end have a lot to watch out for,” said another local Congress leader here.

As for the BJP, the party believes that the “notes for votes” scam has exposed the Congress and given it another weapon for use in the Delhi Assembly polls. Also, with the Congress still leading the UPA, a senior BJP leader said on Wednesday, the party would not lose focus of its attack as in Delhi issues related to law and order and land come under the Centre’s jurisdiction and a new dispensation there would have blunted the attack to that extent.

Many in the party also believe that the BSP wants to completely eliminate the Congress by gradually making inroads into its traditional vote banks – as it did in Uttar Pradesh -- on a pan-India basis and therefore in Delhi too it would fight elections for all seats later this year. Though the BJP is unlikely to go in for an alliance with the BSP in any manner, some of the leaders are happy with its rise for the present.

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