Modi wins MCD

THE BJP’s strategy of beating 10 years non-performance in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections was audacious but it paid off handsomely. It benched all its sitting councillors and put up PM Narendra Modi as the poster boy for the campaign, ignoring the secular voices, enfeebled by the recent electoral reverses, about the absurdity of hoisting the head of a national government as the cheerleader for a civic election. Except for the reverses in the Delhi and Bihar assembly elections, the PM has been a successful vote harvesting card in practically all other polls. 

The MCD polls maintained that trend and even the Sensex acknowledged the political wind of the times by shooting to an all-time high.

The Congress, the grand old party, was riven by rifts in contrast to the organisational efficiency of the BJP that relentlessly agitated against the AAP government in Delhi. The Congress slid further into disarray with the former three-term CM Sheila Dikshit locking horns with the campaign leader and two prominent leaders bolting for the BJP in the run up to the polls. The result: the Congress barely passed muster as a recognised party in two of the three civic bodies that make up the MCD. Its saving grace is that it managed to claw back the Muslim votes lost to AAP in the 2015 assembly elections.  

While the Congress was on a wing and a prayer, the writing was on the wall for AAP after the humiliating Rajouri Garden reverse. The knives ought to be out for Arvind Kejriwal and his groupies, especially after Bhagwant Mann concurred with his state unit blaming the Delhi coterie for the below-par showing in Punjab as well. Kejriwal's initiatives, deliberately thwarted at every turn by the Lt. Governor, were lost in the deterioration of the national capital into a polluted mess of garbage-strewn streets. Kejriwal is making last-ditch attempts at salvaging the situation. Its MLAs are jumping ship while the EC could disqualify another 21. AAP’s diatribe on EVMs is an attempt to forestall its meltdown. Its only solace is that it is the premier opposition force in Delhi and Punjab.