Bawana bypoll victory a huge rebuff to Delhi BJP

The dashing victory of Aam Admi Party in the Bawana bye-election in Delhi defeating the nearest BJP rival with about 24000 votes keeping the Congress party candidate in a distant third position has rattled the BJP leadership in Delhi.

This victory of AAP is in a way significant because the election to the Delhi Assembly is due for 2019 and Delhi BJP and Congress party are trying their best to gain the lost political ground by defaming and countering the ruling AAP at all costs.  It may be recalled that in the recently held Delhi municipal elections the Bhartiya Janata Party has won with a landslide victory in all the corporations with the ruling AAP getting merely 40 seats in all – the worst performance of Kejriwal’s highly ambitious party.

It also lost the last years bye-election held on the Rajouri seat at the hands of BJP earlier held by its own MLA Jarnail Singh who went to contest from Punjab legislative assembly.  Not only this but the AAP fared badly in the Punjab as well as the Goa elections where it had concentrated its best efforts to ensure its victory. Moreover Chief Minister Kejriwal’s confrontational attitude with the previous Delhi LG and Prime minister Modi had also resulted in the Delhi electorates going against him including his media bashing.

But after facing so much of humiliation the Delhi CM and his ministers have now concentrated on developmental works than adopting the confrontational posture with the center or the current LG and as a result things seem to have been going in AAP’s favour.  Some of the initiatives of AAP government in terms of distributing free medicines, free water to the lower sections and lower middle class with cheap electricity up to 400 units compounded with free treatment in private hospitals for critical illnesses, improvement in the condition of government schools, opening of polyclinics with free treatment and 100% increase in the salaries of Anganwadi teachers and workers etc have definitely send a good and healthy message to the lower sections of the society in Delhi which earlier used to be the Congress’s traditional vote bank. Its concessions to the minorities and standing solidly behind them on the issue of secularism etc has also helped AAP win the fullest confidence and trust of the minority community in Delhi. However, on the contrary the encouragement to the AAYA RAM GAYA RAAM politics by BJP by engineering defections from Congress and BJP has not been taken well by the Delhi electorates, it seems. It’s only because of this that the BJP’s candidate Ved Prakash who defected from AAP as a sitting MLA has lost to AAP’s Ram Chander by a whopping 24000 votes. There are also signs of tremendous internal bickerings in the BJP that played an important role in the BJP’s defeat in this bye election.

In a nutshell while this victory sends negative message for BJP amongst the electorates of Delhi, AAP has every reason to believe that it can still make it for the second time in the capital, if it improves its performance and gives developmental results to the Delhi populace with improving the socio-economic lot of the lowest sections of the society which is considered to be the largest chunk of Delhi vote bank. Congress Party will have to do much much more, still.

SUNIL NEGI