The Congress partys secret weapon in Delhi? As Delhi goes to vote two weeks from now, the Congress would like voters to believe that they are fighting and winning a fourth term based on Sheila Dikshits record as an able administrator. This is a claim contested by the Congress rivals, the BJP and the Aam Admi. The BJP points to how they defeated the Congress in last years municipal elections. The AAPs Yogendra Yadav says they have done extensive research to show how Delhi, particularly Delhis underclass suffers from a range of chronic problems: lack of clean water, poor sanitation, education, and health facilities. The Congress denies this. As Mrs Dikshit voters are wise enough to see how Delhi has improved in the past 15 years. But Chattar Singh, a senior vice-President of the Delhi Congress told NDTVs show Truth vs Hype that the real secret of the Congresss success is its strong base amongst the citys four dominant communities, OBCs (16%) , Brahmins (9%), Dalits (16%) and Muslims (12%), with an emphasis on the latter two. For all the perceived cosmopolitanism of a city like Delhi, he says large sections continue to vote along lines of caste and community. Chattar Singh showed us a list of 48 seats where Dalits and Muslims are more than 20% of electorate. He said Congress swept these seats in the 2008 assembly elections, winning 34, with BJP only winning 10. This, he said, was a key factor powering the Congress to a majority in the 70-member assembly. In fact, Mr Singh, who was one of the members of the Delhi State Congress Committee represented on the Delimitation Commission claimed that the Congress managed to use the delimitation exercise conducted prior to the 2008 elections to increase the Dalit-Muslim social mix in at least 20 constituencies. This is a controversial contention. The delimitation process, conducted by a state-level Commission with representatives of all political parties, is meant to redraw the boundaries of constituencies to ensure that all seats have roughly an equal number of voters. The exercise is not meant to strengthen any partys vote banks or weaken those of its rivals, only to even out the numbers. But as Chattar Singh candidly put it, there were about 20 seats which we managed to move around here and there to make them okay (favourable to the Congress). For this, he said we had to realign these constituencies, which made our position stronger. For example, he said, the Badli seat, dominated by the BJP until 2008, was made into a Congress seat by adding wards from Muslim and Dalit dominated Jahangirpuri. In the bargain, he said, some seats became pure BJP seats, but far fewer in number. We asked him how these changes could have been pushed through under the BJPs nose. He said the BJP, which was represented in the Delimitation Commission by its Delhi leaders VK Malhotra and OP Babbar did raise objections, but he claimed that the Congress was better prepared with facts and figures to justify these changes. Our ground preparation was very strong, he said. BJP rubbished these claims, as did the AAP. Yogendra Yadav said his surveys find that Muslims and Dalits are joining his party in large numbers.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 05:09:08 +0000
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