Does BJP Have Anyone To Match Kejriwal?

'BJP insiders acknowledge that the party needs to be helmed by someone who can match Arvind Kejriwal's stature.'

'A Sudhanshu Trivedi or Bansuri Swaraj could bring the freshness the party needs in Delhi,' points out Aditi Phadnis.

Delhi's soul has been seared by the death of three young people who drowned in the basement of a coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar because drainage systems were not working or did not exist.

About a year ago, videos circulated on the social media of a similar facility in Mukherjee Nagar, close to Delhi University.

In that case, it was fire: Children could be seen jumping off the top floor of the building to certain death because the building was enveloped in an inferno and there were no fire-escape systems in place.

There have been other incidents of house collapse because illegal construction in the neighbourhood has weakened the foundations of existing houses; and carbon monoxide poisoning because of faulty ventilation.

Everything points to collusion/corruption/neglect by officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the Delhi government.

What should worry everyone is that this will keep happening.

The Aam Aadmi Party controls the MCD. It is an established fact that AAP and the bureaucracy do not get on.

The physical attack on then chief secretary Anshu Prakash in 2018 by AAP loyalists was the subject of a bitterly fought court battle that Mr Prakash only partially won.

The section of the bureaucracy that does not agree with AAP has a ready court of appeal in the lieutenant governor's office.

This only strengthens AAP's case that those who are not with it are against it. Two poles of power do not make for good governance.

In 2022, AAP wrested control of the MCD from the Bharatiya Janata Party, ending that party's 15-year term.

The AAP got 134 wards but the BJP was not far behind with 104 and only three percentage points in terms of votes.

This was after the BJP piloted and successfully changed Delhi's local governance scheme: In 2012, then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit trifurcated local government into zones, hoping to break the BJP's back via a kind of delimitation.

The trifurcation had its problems and these were manifested in 2017, when the BJP won by a landslide in the MCD elections with 181 wards of the 270.

AAP has been in power in the Delhi assembly since 2015 with two massive victories (in 2015 and 2020), but the 2017 polls proved it had shallow roots: It could win only 49 wards.

The 2022 polls fixed this. Just prior to the 2022 polls, the BJP re-merged the zones into one entity. But it still lost the elections to AAP.

Why is all this important? Apart from corruption, negligence, and associated urban-governance problems, politics is central to the MCD's functioning.

A physical fight broke out in the MCD in 2023 over the election of standing committees.

AAP and BJP fought with water bottles and fists.

The election of the mayor was equally contentious.

You can be forgiven for asking that if they were fighting all the time, when the councillors found time to work.

The Delhi high court has asked the same questions.

The L-G's office has also ratcheted up the pressure, charging that the Delhi government was asked to de-silt drains and it just sat on the proposal.

AAP says when it wants to work, the L-G's office won't let it.

You would have thought that all this would lead to the great revival of the BJP in Delhi, which had titans like Madan Lal Khurana leading it at one time.

The current chief of the party, Virender Sachdeva, has held press conferences and led a demonstration outside the AAP office.

But mobilisation has been limited to protests by BJP workers. The outrage of ordinary, unaffiliated voters remains untapped.

BJP insiders acknowledge that the party needs to be helmed by someone who can match Arvind Kejriwal's stature.

A Sudhanshu Trivedi or Bansuri Swaraj could bring the freshness the party needs in Delhi.

No city in India is changing as much as Delhi. Migrants continue to be its backbone as before.

But the age, regional profile, and background of those coming to Delhi are completely different today from what they were even 10 years ago.

AAP's rise was the result of Delhi's new political economy.

The BJP needs to attune itself to this reality.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com