As we enter into 2022, the residents of the national capital should remember that it’s going to be the year for the municipal elections. There are two major local elections for the city – the state assembly and the municipal polls.
Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), prior to 2012, ran an administration that was almost parallel to the Delhi government in the matter of territorial coverage. In 2012, the Sheila Dikshit government pushed for decentralisation and got the monolith municipal body divided into three corporations – North, South, and East.
While some say that it was a ploy by Dikshit to wean back the municipal bodies under the Congress fold but she did not succeed, and in 2012 it once again went back to BJP. The same story repeated in 2017 when despite the rout in the assembly polls at the hands of AAP, the BJP managed to bounce back and held control of the three corporations.
Though there are instances of different parties ruling the three different tiers of government in the city – central, state and municipal —, the past five years have been different. The AAP has been at the loggerheads not only with the Central government but also the municipal bodies. If the state government has grouse against the Centre for starving it financially, the same is the grouse of the municipal bodies vis-à-vis the state government.
AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal with grand plans to spread the wings of the party pan-India will of course leave no stones unturned to win the municipal polls lest it should setback his political march. On the other hand, the BJP would not want another defeat in the national capital to make its bloodied nose have a larger-than-life image.
Unfortunately, the BJP in the past few years seems to have worked overtime to bring ruin to its Delhi unit, which at one time with leaders like Madanlal Khurana, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, and Saheb Singh Verma was a very strong team. From the strong management of its cadres, the party strategy in the national capital has veered off towards caste management, which has failed to pay dividends.
In 2017 municipal polls, the BJP had just about managed to retain its traditional vote share of about 35 percent. However, it came to rule the MCDs as the opposition vote share was divided between Congress and the AAP. A rejuvenated Congress under the Delhi unit president Ajay Maken managed to raise the party’s vote share from a meager 9 percent in the 2015 Vidhan Sabha polls to a very respectable 22 percent in the municipal polls.
However, 2022 is going to be different with the Congress vote-share in the last assembly polls having come down to five percent. If it’s a bipolar poll between the BJP and the AAP, the chances of the BJP retaining its sway of the municipal bodies are very remote.
As party-hopping has already started, indications are that the present Delhi Congress leadership has so far not been able to inspire confidence and there are several who are jumping the boat and joining the AAP. Using its time-tested method of competitive populism, the AAP will put on offer many freebies, while the BJP will release its own list of goodies.
In the midst of this, it will be worth watching if the voter in the national capital pitches for civic governance or mere freebies. After all, the capital is in a civic mess today. But then the choice is between the devil and the deep sea.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice