Election in India’s Capital Tests Modi, BJP

Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) pose a challenge to President Narendra Modi’s BJP in the Delhi elections for chief minister. (Wikimedia Commons)

Elections in India’s capital, Delhi, began on February 8, with a tight race projected between the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the city’s current incumbent leadership, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The elections come amid ongoing protests against recent policy proposals by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. 

Almost 57 percent of the capital’s 14.7 million voters turned out on February 7, with the election serving as a crucial test for the BJP, which has not run the city since 1998 and is looking for a followup to its landslide 2019 national election victory. Exit polls seem to be projecting a win for the AAP, however, which won previously in 2015, claiming 67 of 70 seats in the legislature. The BJP holds the three remaining seats. 

Arvind Kejriwal, the current chief minister of Delhi (a position equivalent to mayor), is a member of the AAP, a liberal-leaning party that emerged in 2012 specifically to tackle the city’s corruption problem. The BJP has not yet picked a candidate for chief minister, framing the contest as a battle between Modi and Kejriwal. 

Although both parties have noted the importance of combating Delhi’s pollution, which spiked dangerously last fall, the BJP’s campaign has largely focused on national issues while the AAP has focused on local ones like corruption and employment opportunities. Kejriwal has highlighted the achievements of his party over the last five years of rule, such as fixing state-run schools and healthcare in the city of more than 16 million people. 

The BJP has pushed back against the weekly protests in Delhi against the government’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Critics say that the CAA, which offers a fast-track to citizenship to refugees from India’s Muslim-majority neighbors fleeing religious persecution, is discriminatory as it specifically excludes Muslims from such benefits. While the intensity of the protests has declined since December, demonstrators are still blocking access to parts of the Shaheen Bagh neigborhood, a Muslim-majority quarter on the outskirts of Delhi. 

Various BJP leaders have spoken out against these protests, including Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, who urged supporters on January 25 to push the BJP button on the voting machine “so hard that protesters at Shaheen Bagh feel compelled to get up and leave.”

Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, also spoke critically about the protests on February 2, saying that “the protests happening at various places in Delhi are not because of the Citizenship Amendment Act…. They are happening because these people want to prevent India from becoming a global power.” Adityanath even claimed that Kejriwal had been handing out biryani to the Shaheen Bagh protestors, leading the Election Commission to issue a warning notice to Adityanath at the request of the AAP. 

The AAP has not put out any word about the protests, however, and Kejriwal has generally stayed away from Shaheen Bagh and other protest sites. Even though the AAP voted against the contentious act in Parliament, the party has preferred to keep its message focused on policy issues and on Kejriwal’s record of anti-corruption and education reform. 

The results are set to be announced on February 12 at the earliest, with exit polls currently predicting a large AAP victory of between 59 to 68 seats, while the BJP could win between two and 11 seats. 

“We are winning by a huge margin,” tweeted Manish Sisiodia, deputy chief minister of Delhi and member of the AAP. “Today I salute the hard work of all colleagues.”