LS 2014: Is the Congress making a come-back in Delhi?

New Delhi: Going by the aggression and combativeness of the Congress party’s counter-attack against the Aam Admi Party (AAP), it is evident the party is determined to prevent, at all cost, a repeat of the devastating results 2013 state election.

AFP

Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation as chief minister and AAP minority government’s fall after 49 days in power, appears to have given the Congress party the much-needed lease of life to revive itself.

A month-and-a-half after Kejriwal left Delhi with undelivered promises to pursue national ambitions, Congress leaders are claiming significant recoveries of their vote-share from AAP. AAP’s stunning victory in Delhi was because it had succeeded in breaking the Congress party’s monopoly over Delhi’s poor – voters in slum clusters, resettlement colonies, the migrants and the Dalits.

“The Aam Admi Party by telling lies broke into our vote-bank. Our strategy is to win our vote-bank back. We have been working at the ground level for many days now. Our main focus is on jhuggi (slum) clusters, resettlement colonies and unauthorised colonies. Our workers have fanned out into constituencies and have been talking to voters. Our feedback is that our vote-share has increased by close to 12 percent which has shifted to back to us from the AAP. In resettlement colonies, unauthorised colonies and jhuggi clusters we are making significant inroads,” says a senior Delhi Congress leader when asked what the party’s strategy was to counter AAP.

Congress candidates who have hit the campaign trail say they sense a perceptible change in the attitude of the local party worker between now and when the AAP government was in power.

Speaking to Firstpost last week while on campaign trail, East Delhi Congress candidate Sandeep Dikshit said, “Three-four months ago, there was not so much response. We don’t always go for campaigning but I keep going now and then for work, functions to my constituency. There is a difference in the reaction between then and now. One significant difference is the workers’ confidence. They would earlier say, the AAP government has slashed electricity prices, announced free water, but now they don’t say that… The illusions that people had voted for have come down.”

Dikshit argues that because AAP formed the government in Delhi, the Congress party no longer has the disadvantage of being incumbent government in the state. “This time we have a lot to attack on. Obviously, party workers are always energised when they have less to answer for and more to question on,” says Dikshit.

Asked why he was so sure that voters were indeed returning to the Congress the two-time MP said, “There are some groups that have broken away from them. Since most of our voters had gone to them, obviously if they come back, they come back more to us… They are coming back from the poorer communities, the resettlement belts and some of the Dalit communities. This is what our workers are telling us, they are the ones who are mingling with the voters.”

While on one hand the Congress has been hard-selling AAP’s ‘betrayal’ of Delhi’s voters, it has also been systematically reaching out to sections of voters most likely to be disillusioned with AAP and those who were promised radical reforms once they came to power.

Take for instance contract workers, who had been promised regularisation by the AAP. Delhi state unit chief Arvinder Singh Lovely, speaking to reporters, on Friday, said, “People are angry with AAP for making false promises to them. I have met many contract workers who were given false assurances by the AAP government. Contract workers, especially from the home guards, the education sector, the Delhi transport corporation are very angry with AAP. Keeping all this in mind, we feel the results of Lok Sabha will surprise all of you.”

As elections get closer, the Delhi Congress has opened yet another front of attack against the party. By fishing in troubled waters and welcoming AAP leaders into its fold, the party seems to be trying to amplify the ‘disillusionment’ factor among AAP leaders and members.

By inducting AAP leader Maulana Ashrafi, who claims to have been a founder member of the party, with much fanfare and in full glare of the media and hinting at more big names from AAP joining Congress in the coming days, the party seems to have all but declared war on AAP.

In addition, in what seems to be a deliberate and strategic consolidation voters in each constituency, the last few weeks have seen a spate of the inductions by the Congress party of independent councillors of local leaders from the JD (U), the Peace Party and the BSP.

Asked about this sudden enthusiasm for welcoming defectors from other parties, a Delhi Congress leader said, “We are not just welcoming a leader into the party, we are also benefiting from the mass support-base he enjoys in his constituency.”

Given these calculated moves by the party and its multi-pronged approach to win back its traditional voters from AAP, it shouldn’t be all that surprising perhaps that a new survey (ABP News-Nielsen) shows a significant increase in the Congress party’s vote-share from 9 percent in January to 28 percent in March accompanied by a decline in AAP’s vote-share from 55 per cent to 34 per cent in the same period.

You can read the survey report here.

LS 2014: Is the Congress making a come-back in Delhi?