BJP's Delhi challenge - getting youth and middle class to vote

The challenge facing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi – bigger than winning the hearts of the city’s sizeable Dalit population or negating Arvind Kejriwal’s ‘disclosure a day’ against its leaders – is to get its middle class support base to the polling booths on the day of voting on February 7.

Delhi’s youth and middle classes voted for AAP in the 2013 assembly elections, but were enamoured by Narendra Modi’s promise of development in the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP won all the seven seats in Delhi in the Lok Sabha, increasing its vote share from 33 per cent that it bagged in the 2013 assembly to over 46 per cent barely four months later in the Lok Sabha elections. That the middle classes voted in greater numbers helped the AAP in 2013 assembly and BJP in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

BJP strategists are confident the party will retain the youth and middle class votes it received in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, but are unsure if these sections will queue up to vote in what looks like a "no-wave" assembly election. The voter turnout in 2013 was nearly 66 per cent (see box) – all time high for Delhi since the first assembly elections of the newly constituted assembly in 1993. The voting percentage of 65.07 in 2014 Lok Sabha was the highest in 30-years. The all time high being 71.31 per cent voter turnout in the ‘wave’ elections of 1977.

The BJP and its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), therefore, believe they need to dig deeper to ensure its youth and middle class support base turns up to vote in what is likely to be a non-wave elections in 2015. The BJP has also drawn a list of 1,000 polling booths in Delhi’s urban seats, from the total 11,763 booths, which it lost to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) by less than 500 votes in the 2013 assembly polls. It has also focused on the seven seats it lost to AAP by less than 2,000 votes. Booth level workers have been asked to concentrate on ensuring people turn up to vote on poll, similar to the RSS campaign of "100 per cent voting" in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Some in the party believe announcing Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate at the earliest could enthuse the middle classes to vote in ever larger numbers. Posters and publicity material with Bedi as its 'face' for the Delhi campaign are already being put up across Delhi. BJP leader Vijay Goel has already come out in support of Bedi as the CM candidate. The party could announce Bedi its CM candidate at the time of release of its list of candidates by early next week.

The party has also strengthened its outreach to the Dalits, which comprise nearly one-fifth of Delhi's electorate. BJP President Amit Shah today address a 'Dalit sammelan' organised by party's Dalit MP from Delhi Udit Raj. The last such gathering, a couple of months back, had been a huge flop. Dalits, the traditional vote bank of the Congress, had moved to AAP in 2013 assembly elections.

Manifesto promises will include commitments to ensure regular water supply, 24-hour power supply, pucca houses to Delhi’s three million slum dwellers by 2022, regularizing unauthorized colonies which are home to four million of Delhi’s population, more schools and a multi-speciality hospital for some of Delhi’s outlying areas, etc. "We will focus on the 15 years of Congress misrule, and the mess AAP left behind in its 49-day rule," Shrikant Sharma, party national secretary, said.

The BJP, in its 2013 assembly election manifesto, had promised to "continue to struggle for full statehood to Delhi". It remains to be seen if it will reiterate that promise now that there is a BJP led government at the Centre.