The Aam Admi Party (AAP) is looking its most confident in the East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency ahead of next month's Lok Sabha elections in the Capital. After all, it swept five of the ten assembly seats that fall under Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit's watch, in the 2013 assembly elections.
The two-time MP, who won the East Delhi seat by a wide margin of over 2 lakh votes in 2004 and in 2009, is battling not just an intense anti-congress wave and the anti-incumbency factor, but also struggling to maintain his grip on the party's traditional voters in East Delhi.
AAP has already broken the Congress party's hold over voters in East Delhi's slum and resettlement colonies and is now aggressively wooing Muslim and Dalit voters, who also form a significant voter-base in the constituency.
Shruti Dhapola/Firstpost
East Delhi has a sizeable population of Muslim (estimated at about 20 percent) and Dalit voters. Of the ten assembly seats in East Delhi, two are reserved seats. And both were won by AAP in the 2013 assembly elections.
Confident of its presence and influence in East Delhi, AAP has fielded Gandhi's grandson Rajmohan Gandhi from here.
Asked about their election strategy, the party's campaign manager for East Delhi, said their focus was directed at the five assembly seats that they lost in the state elections.
"We are planning massive campaigns there. Earlier this week, we held car rallies and road shows in those Vidhan Sabhas and we will be scheduling jan sabhas in those seats. We are getting a lot of positive response from the people," said Praveen Deshmukh, AAP's campaign manager for East Delhi.
On the general strategy of the campaign, Deshmukh said, "We are targeting voters in slum and resettlement colonies. And also the middle-class voters in the societies."
The party, he says, is confident of also winning the support of voters from the Sikh community who represent about 3 percent of East Delhi's electorate. The 49-day AAP government's decision to form a SIT to probe the 1984 riots has won over the Sikh community, says the party worker.
Not to be under-estimated, the BJP has had its share of electoral success in East Delhi winning the seat in 1991, 1998 and 1999.
In 2013 assembly elections, it won three out of the ten assembly constituencies that fall under East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency. The party is looking to capitalise on the middle-class voters with its choice of Mahesh Giri, a social worker and Art of Living exponent, who brings with him the celebrity of spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
With Giri by his side, the Art of Living founder was in the Capital on Thursday, publicly endorsing the 'lotus' as the "seat of wealth" in the run up to the elections.
Rejecting the Congress party's charge that he is an outsider, Giri says he has been working with residents of East Delhi for the last three years.
On whether Dikshit's decisive victories in the last two Lok Sabha elections posed a big challenge for the party, Giri said, "The Congress party poses a challenge to itself. They cannot ask for votes on the issue of development because in the name of development all they have done is corruption. The time for dynasties is over. The voters will choose those who are working amidst them. I don't think this seat is going to be challenge to win."
Dismissing the threat by the Arvind Kejriwal-led party, Giri said, "Kejriwal had approached me during the India Against Corruption movement. And I had joined him because it was for the good of the nation. I have seen him up-close. He is very a good pathologist but he is not a surgeon. He can diagnose but does not know surgery. We are surgeons. We look at the problems and also know how to solve them."
In a rather weak response to his political opponents, Dikshit told reporters on Thursday that he would fight the election on the issue 'development' and questioned AAP and BJP over their decision to field 'outsiders who have nothing to do with the development of Delhi'.
Desperate to retain its hold over the sizeable Muslim community in East Delhi, the party on Thursday announced that Janata Dal (U) municipal councillor from Okhla (assembly seat in East Delhi with more than 40 per cent Muslim voters) had joined the Congress.
Putting up a brave front, state congress leader Mukesh Sharma said Dikshit would remain unchallenged in East Delhi. "There is no challenge from AAP in the Lok Sabha election. The congress party's fight in Delhi in all seven seats is with the RSS."
Why the RSS? "This election is being fought by the RSS not the BJP. Modi is an RSS creation. That is the reason why they have silenced leaders like senior L K Advani."
Dismissing Rajmohan Gandhi and Giri as 'outsiders', the state congress leader said,"Sandeep Dikshit is a mass-based leader and a two-time MP. The fight in East Delhi is going to be between gharwala and baharwalas."
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