New Delhi: The Delhi unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to hold a dedicated brainstorming session to work out a strategy for the national capital, ahead of the 2022 civic polls, given that it has so far failed to leverage Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s face in the one city-state.
According to a party functionary, the senior BJP leaders of its Delhi unit will attend a two-day ‘Chintan Shivir’ in Haridwar, starting 23 August, to discuss the municipal elections and the overall political situation in the national capital.
“At the same time, discussions will be held on the kind of strategy required to take on the Arvind Kejriwal government,” the functionary said. “The political landscape of Delhi has changed over the past few years and we need to make changes to our strategy keeping that in mind.”
“We have been winning municipal elections for the past few tenures and need to keep repeating our performance,” he added.
The BJP controls all three municipal corporations in Delhi, but party leaders fear that the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) sops, such as subsidised power and free water, may have an outcome on the civic polls.
A senior BJP leader told ThePrint that the state unit is concerned that the Covid-19 pandemic may have a bearing on the outcome of the municipal polls.
“During the pandemic, we saw that Congress that had lost its political relevance tried to reconnect with the people,” the leader said. “They are going to highlight the work they have done and make it a triangular contest. How this will impact the party needs to be examined. All this will also be discussed.”
Apart from the Delhi BJP president Adesh Kumar Gupta, the general secretary in-charge and co-in-charge of the state, Baijayant Panda, all the three MLAs, seven MPs, leader of opposition in the assembly Ramesh Bidhuri, some former state BJP presidents and one or two other senior leaders of the party are expected to attend the Haridwar session.
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BJP’s performance in Delhi
All three bodies — North Delhi Municipal Corporation, South Delhi Municipal Corporation and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation — have been facing public ire for corruption, red-tape and not doing enough to clean stormwater drains, road upkeep among others.
“Delhi BJP has had too many leaders staking claim to power that has made it directionless,” a second BJP leader said. “While the party can win all the seven seats at the Lok Sabha level, things are completely different at the state level and the fact that AAP has constantly been highlighting the poor performance of the BJP at the municipal level, things are not looking rosy.”
The BJP last held office in Delhi two decades ago, and despite the Congress’ almost complete decimation at the state level, it has been unable to come to power.
A source said the reasons for this are many — from infighting to lack of a credible face to take on Kejriwal, no coherent strategy and the attempt to polarise backfiring in the last assembly elections.
In the 2013 Delhi assembly elections, which saw the debut of the AAP, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party winning 32 of the 70 seats.
However, AAP that won 28 seats decided to form the government with outside support from eight Congress MLAs. Soon after this, Arvind Kejriwal resigned and a year later, won 67 of Delhi’s 70 seats in the 2015 assembly elections.
AAP retained power with 62 seats in the 2020 elections, with the BJP taking the remaining eight.
(Edited by Arun Prashanth)
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