Legend says the modern city of Delhi is built on seven older ones. Though the nuances of ideological substrata are more than seven, Delhi has one face—power. From the Pandavas to the Chauhans to the Mughals to the British, it has always been a seat of power. Delhi is the heart and soul of India. The battle for ballots between the beleaguered Arvind Kejriwal and the pugnacious Narendra Modi is to capture that soul.
The city is once again witnessing the metaphorical drumbeats of war—posters, processions, poll panoply and propaganda—to dominate the 70-member assembly, turning the capital into a warzone. The opposing champions are the aggressively acerbic Modi and the astutely adroit Kejriwal; in between is a headless state Congress happy with taking potshots.
But Delhi is in the ICU. For the past few years, disregard, despair and decrepitude have haunted its roads, sewage systems, hospitals, parks and playgrounds. The Yamuna is now an artery of fatal filth. Women fear leaving home alone after dark because crime is rising. The city’s 30-odd million residents breathe in poison for more than three months a year. Though it has a good airport, innumerable flyovers and decent public education, everyone would flee Delhi if they could.
The toxicity has infected the electoral verbiage of national and local leaders, who spew inventive expletives to tar their opponents with the brush of regressive rhetoric. The combat is not between two parties, but between two individuals: the BJP, lacking a local leader to take on Kejriwal, has fallen back on its tallest leader Modi.
Why has BJP made the Delhi election a do-or-die project? After all, it’s a tiny state. Kejriwal was just one of 30-odd chief ministers. Delhi’s population, with a state GDP of about $130 billion, hardly impacts national politics.
But Modi and his commanders have decided to capture Delhi at any cost. They have given tickets to almost all new defectors as well as its top MPs. In the absence of a CM face, the party has plastered the walls with Modi’s visage. The BJP obviously wishes to have a double-engine sarkar in Delhi too.
Though the Centre, through the lieutenant-governor, has stripped the AAP government of all significant powers, the BJP is sparing no effort to grind it to the dust. All that Chief Minister Atishi has is an official car and an office that is mostly run under the direct or indirect supervision of the LG. Then what’s the problem? It’s that while the BJP rules Raisina Hills, it has been out of the Civil Lines secretariat for 26 years.
In addition, Kejriwal, who has been a thorn in Modi’s side since 2014, is a problem. His high-profile presence is poor political optics for the BJP. He is a formidable potential challenger for the throne of India in the long run, because that throne is also in Delhi.
But in terms of nationwide acceptability and credibility, Kejriwal isn’t even a minor threat to Modi. Even after more than a decade as PM, Modi’s personal ratings exceed 60 percent, as against Kejriwal’s lower double-digits. Modi has repeatedly established that in the national elections, Kejriwal can’t win even a single seat in Delhi. In the elections of 2014, 2019 and 2024, the saffron side swept all of the state’s seven seats. However, in the local elections, Kejriwal forced the BJP eat crow despite a massive Modi-led campaign—the AAP polled more than 50 percent in the last two assembly elections.
Kejriwal’s burgeoning capacity to damage the BJP using the Delhi model bothers the saffron brigade. It is no coincidence that both he and Modi stepped into the national arena at the same time. Kejriwal shot into prominence through Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement in 2012. Modi became the BJP’s prime ministerial face in 2013. While Modi was still crisscrossing the country, Kejriwal floated his party and won 28 of the 70 MLA seats in 2013. He formed a short-lived government, allying with the Congress.
In the Lok Sabha elections, AAP didn’t stand a chance against the Modi cyclone. But to Modi’s surprise, within a year, in 2015, Kejriwal humiliated the BJP. Since then, Kejriwal has been positioning himself not just as an unbeatable chief minister but also a national player. He expanded his footprint in other states including Gujarat. AAP created history by capturing Punjab, winning 92 of the 117 seats. Within 12 years, it has become one of the five parties that enjoy national status.
Since AAP has displaced the Congress in many states, regional parties prefer to deal with Kejriwal rather than the Congress and Rahul Gandhi. For the Delhi elections now, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray and Akhilesh Yadav have extended their support to Kejriwal, who is playing the victim by leveraging his incarceration in the excise scam.
Kejriwal has skillfully used the media to stay on prime time. Delhi is a major media centre where national news agencies, newspapers, TV channels, and online media operate from. Hence Kejriwal’s daily experiments are closely watched, critiqued and disseminated. The BJP couldn’t digest this flair for publicity. Moreover, Kejriwal has never accepted Modi's leadership and has made him a personal target of venomous verbs. He has rarely invited Modi, like other CMs do, for state functions. The BJP sees these as attempts to undermine the office of the prime minister.
None of Delhi's previous CMs ever got into a direct confrontation with the PM. In 1967, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Delhi’s first chief executive councillor with no independent powers, worked closely with the LG to convert Delhi into a city of fountains. Even the Yamuna was partially cleaned. Subsequent BJP chief ministers worked harmoniously with Congress governments at the Centre. Sheila Dixit, the three-term CM, never had even a minor tiff with Atal Bihari Vajpayee because the CM accepted the PM’s supremacy and vice versa.
If Modi is neither a Vajpayee nor a Narasimha Rao, Kejriwal is also no Dixit or Madan Lal Khurana. Neither is willing to cede political space. The BJP is hoping that Kejriwal’s acceptability has declined due to his much-publicised ostentatious lifestyle. They hope his alleged corruption in excise policy and hyperbolic attacks on Modi will disenchant voters.
The Rajdhani can’t have two samrats. Modi's challenge is to avoid a third consecutive assembly defeat after three Lok Sabha victories. In the capital, where the cold wave is a common visitor, will the Modi wave triumph over the Kejriwal breakwater is Delhi’s dilemma this winter.