NAMO is NO in DELHI Election... Overbid, overexposed and bruised in the previous season, the AAP and its leader Arvind Kejriwal were redrawing the party’s strategy well in time, even as the BJP was caught in internal strife and strategic confusion. “Many of our candidates were in an NGO mode in 2013. Now they are no longer novices,” says an AAP strategist. The AAP used the interregnum to separate the grain from the chafe among its own, and announced candidates for all seats by the first week of January, dropping seven MLAs, retaining 21 MLAs and 12 old candidates. Half of its candidates are fresh faces; six are women, five are Muslims and six are Sikhs with an average age of just above 40. Meanwhile, the AAP’s appeal among the middle class has sagged, as they found in Narendra Modi what they had sought in Mr. Kejriwal: an incorruptible, decisive leader. The continuing disapproval among the well heeled notwithstanding, the AAP’s appeal among the poor has only improved. The party’s campaign had sharply been focussing on the point that the BJP had no chief ministerial candidate in the State; it asked whether Mr. Modi would become the Chief Minister of Delhi. Recurring communal clashes in poorer areas of Delhi in recent months divided the poor on religious lines, but its electoral impact may be limited.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 09:24:51 +0000
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