Broom and lotus

 On February 8, Delhi’s electorate of 1,46,92,136 voters out of 1.9 crore people, will go to the polls to choose 70 members to the 7th Delhi Legislative Assembly after results of which will be declared on February 11. The ruling AAP which swept the polls in 2015 winning 67 out of 70 seeks to retain power in Delhi where it first formed a minority government in 2013 with 28 MLAs and with the conditional support of nine Congress MLAs. The BJP had won 34 but failed to form the government. In the 2015 assembly election, the AAP swept the polls in a spectacular manner winning 67 seats. In the run up to the February 8 election, pollsters largely predict another sweep for the AAP winning between 53-56; BJP between 12-15 and Congress between 2-4 seats. The AAP has taken up the first plunge by steering the election debate into governance. It has deliberately stayed clear of contentious national issues, which leaves the main opposition BJP with no strong talking point against the party. The AAP is trying to convince voters that it has delivered during the last five years by providing free water free, bus ride free for women and free electricity up to 200 units. AAP’s biggest boast is in the field of education where it claims to have brought far reaching changes which it prides itself with. The AAP government allocated Rs 13,997 crore for 2019-20, the highest funding for fifth straight year. The vast improvement in teaching has been on appointment of 36.000 teachers and another 22,000 guest teachers out of a total 64,000 sanctioned posts. The achievements in the academic field can be seen in the 2018 CBSE Class 12 results where the pass percentage of 90.68 in government schools, has been better than the 88.35 per cent of private institutions and even the national average of 83.01 per cent. There are also misses of the AAP while in power as all is not as rosy as the party would like people to believe. For instance, the AAP has claimed it has already delivered on its promise of free electricity, water, free metro and bus rides for women, its much vaunted mohalla clinics, ensure 100 per cent implementation of admission of students under the economically weaker section (EWS) quota in private schools and transparency etc. It has however failed to even mention its inability to provide its ambitious project of providing free WiFi across the city which now remains on the paper. It can hardly say much about its promise of weeding out corruption but still the AAP continues to blow its own trumpet because the only party that has tried to rubbish all these claims is the BJP, the latter of which is on a totally different wicket. If a closer scrutiny of the AAP claims is done, it would possibly mean that the party has managed to deliver hardly 40% of its electoral promises. The BJP is and will inject its divisive electioneering campaign as that is the only way by which the AAP can be checkmated to a large extent, if voters fall for the tactic. The AAP has been on a freebee mode, promising everything free. The BJP has taken up its brand of nationalism to counter AAP’s governance plank and how this unravels will be interesting to watch.