Cong aiming to give direct fight to AAP in Delhi, eat into its vote base

New Delhi: Decimated by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the 2015 assembly elections in a state they ruled for 15 years, the Congress party in Delhi claim they have used the last five years to rebuild the party cadre.

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Leaders of the grand old party said they will rely on their past work in the national Capital, and the reliability of their experienced leadership to regain their position.

Party leaders also said the local leadership has been “strategically” working to give AAP a direct fight in the upcoming elections. Having a similar vote base, the Congress has, for the last few months, worked to regain the numbers it lost to the AAP.

All India Congress Committee (AICC) leaders privy with the party’s election campaign strategy in Delhi said that they have come up with the slogan ‘paach saal behaal’ (five years of disappointment), to counter AAP’s election campaign slogan — ‘acche beete paanch saal, lage raho Kejriwal’ (five years went well, keep going Kejriwal).

“AAP definitely is our direct competition, because BJP has a certain vote base and if you look at the trend, that vote base has remained intact. Both us and the AAP will be working to earn the confidence of a similar demography,” a senior AICC leader said on the condition of anonymity.

Their election campaign in the coming month is likely to revolve around the work done by the party in Delhi’s development in their 15-year tenure in Delhi, the leader said.

“People are fed up of AAP. They could not even maintain the work that the Congress party did,” said Delhi Congress chief, Subhash Chopra.

Congress leaders also said that with every election after its worst debacle in 2015 polls, the party has gained ground and managed to improve their vote share. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party ended up as runners-up in five of the seven parliamentary constituencies in the national capital.

Party leaders consider this a major achievement, since this was the first time since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that the Congress party managed to pip AAP to the third position in any election in terms of vote share.

Data from the Election Commission of India (ECI) shows that in the 2019 parliamentary polls, the BJP bagged 56.5% votes in Delhi. They were followed by the Congress party with a share of 22.5%, and then the AAP with a vote share of 18.1%.

In the 2017 municipal elections too, the Congress were able to increase their share to 24.87%. Despite the upward curve, many leaders are worried that the performance that the Congress party showed in last year’s parliamentary polls could be single-handedly credited to the late former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who was leading the party back then.

The Passing of Dikshit, CM for 15 years, in July last year has left the Congress party without a known face that can resonate with Delhi’s voters.

“Sheila ji was definitely a big leader and the party is surely going miss the connection that she had with Delhiites,” another senior Congress leader said.

Some in the party said the present state leadership, which is a careful mix to appease the city’s Punjabi and Purvanchali voters, will help the party reach out to a wider base. Chopra’s Punjabi background, along with Congress’ campaign head Kirti Azad’s Purvanchali roots will cater to a massive chunk of Delhi’s electoral make.

Senior leaders confirmed that there is a huge possibility that the Congress will stick to known leaders such Ajay Maken, Arvinder Singh Lovely, Haroon Yusuf, Devender Yadav and Asif Muhammad Khan as likely candidates. The newly re-inducted former AAP legislator Alka Lamba is also likely to find place in the candidate list, especially since the former Congress MLA from Chandni Chowk Prahlad Singh Sawhney joined the AAP in October last year.