AAP vs BJP in Wildly-Swinging Race for Delhi Civic Body

Far from an AAP landslide predicted by exit polls, it's a neck-and-neck with the BJP as vote-counting for Delhi civic polls, held on December 4, continues.

At 10:10am, leads for all 250 seats are in, with AAP at 122 and BJP at 111; Congress at 11, reports NDTV.

After about two hours of counting, just past 10 am, it looks like the AAP might just scrape through and wrest control of the MCD, though the ruling BJP has also been catching up — it even crossed the halfway mark of 125 in early leads — as trends change by the minute. 

The AAP is in a huddle at Arvind Kejriwal's home. Manish Sisodia and Raghav Chadha are with him. The party office has balloons and celebratory posters ready as confidence was at a peak before advanced trends dented it a bit. First trends around 8.30 showed the AAP taking a lead in 60 of 100 seats; but as numbers from all 250 seats trickled in, it became clear that this wasn't even close to what exit polls predicted. An aggregate of four exit polls predicted AAP victory on 155 seats; 84 for BJP and seven for Congress.

Though the BJP has not formed the Delhi state government in the past 24 years, its control over MCD has been strong through Congress and AAP governments. Even when the AAP won a record 67 of 70 seats in the 2015 assembly polls, the BJP, two years later, retained the civic body by winning 181 of its 272 seats. AAP was second with 48 and Congress third with 30. 

The AAP and BJP, both currently controlling parts of Delhi's administration through state and central governments, are fighting on all seats. The Congress is fighting on 247 seats as nominations of three of its candidates were rejected over technicalities.

These are the first civic elections after the MCD — divided into three, area-wise, around 10 years ago — was reunified and the wards redrawn. The latest term of the BJP ended early this year. Over 1,300 candidates are in the contest. 

In the campaign, the BJP went all-out, as it usually does, getting PM Narendra Modi to hand over keys of some slum rehab flats, one of its highlights. It deployed union ministers and chief ministers too. Local leaders were a distant second fiddle.

The AAP prepared since early last year. It kept its pitch directly mounted on the garbage issue: "We've improved things under the state, now let us take care of sanitation too." The slogan "Kejriwal's government, Kejriwal's corporator" rivalled the BJP's similar pitch of "Modi's double engine" — both building on their top leaders' faces. 

The BJP has made promises of housing, and pressed on corruption charges on several AAP ministers. The Congress has also used these to take digs at AAP. But Kejriwal says his "shaandaar" (glorious) work as chief minister won't be defeated by "bogus charges" and "misuse of central agencies".

The Congress is hoping to get some pockets of influence at least. It's still rebuilding in Delhi after the death of Sheila Dikshit in 2019. Its focus on macro-politics of ideology — evident in Rahul Gandhi's 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' that's still in central India — means the civic body elections aren't high on its priority list. Certainly not as high as on the AAP and BJP's lists.

The Delhi civic body is one of three poll battles being fought parallel over the last couple of months — the others being assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and PM Modi's home state Gujarat, where too the BJP is in power. Himachal was more of a Congress-BJP fight. But it's Gujarat where the AAP is trying to push the Congress aside and break in.