It's election year in Delhi and it seems as though both - the young Aam Aadmi Party as well as the BJP - are fighting to gain maximum political mileage from the recent rape of a five-year-old child in the national capital.

A friend, now an Aam Admi Party activist, sent me a text message claiming credit for bringing the plight of the five-year-old rape victim to center stage as well as the subsequent action by various authorities concerned. The crux of the message was the victim’s uncle statement to some news channels whereby he said her shifting to AIIMS would not have been possible without AAP’s public pressure.

His messages have not stopped since then. Some of them breathe fire against Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar, while others are carefully crafted to portray the Congress and the BJP as part of the same corrupt system. The party seems to be trying real hard to hijack the BJP's old and now almost forgotten catchphrase - party with a difference.

There is no denying that it was AAP workers who went to the state-run Swami Dayanand hospital and the Gandhinagar police station to give the much needed moral and social support to the victims family, as well as help build up the incident that once again shook the conscience of the nation.

In the 16 December gangrape last year, AAP like all other political parties had failed to read popular pulse and faced the rebuff. But this time, in a stroke of gritty agitation, even if it began with a handful, the party came out from its singular 'bijli' obsession.

This was no story of an aspiring India but of a less privileged toddler who had fallen prey to a barbaric neighborhood 'uncle' and the police's inhuman approach to dealing with such a heinous crime.

The streets of Delhi have this time witnessed political conflict of a different kind. Alarmed by the initial success of AAP in highlighting the issue, the principal political rival of the Congress, the BJP, could take it lying down. After all it is election year in Delhi with assembly polls likely to be held in six months, where AAP will fight to open its political account and make its nascent bid for power.

The BJP, on the other hand, feels that it has a natural claim to office if people are losing faith in the ruling Congress. The electoral battle in the national capital territory of Delhi has always been a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress.

Within hours of the rape being reported, Delhi BJP President Vijay Goel was on the streets. He moved fast to compensate the initial loss - holding rallies and planning a sustained campaign on the issue. His party's PR machinery doing the needful.

Not surprisingly, the BJP too claimed that the victim was shifted from Dayanand hospital to AIIMS by the authorities due to pressure put by them. The central leadership of the party too swung into action. Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj visited AIIMS to see the rape victim, Goel along with other senior party members including party chief Rajnath Singh organised a protest rally in Dwarka.

Both the political parties protested outside the Delhi Police headquarters seeking to gain political mileage from the incident. However, the protests at AIIMS, which drew much flak, were mostly by AAP workers. Questions asked where - What was the need for protests at AIIMS? Who were the protests against? Quite obviously, protesting outside the hospital where the victim is recovering would gather public attention and television eyeballs. The police could only have them moved out from inside the medical complex on the second day.

The Congress too did not lag behind. Party Chief Sonia Gandhi visited AIIMS and the Prime Minister's Office sent out a message saying he was deeply disturbed and found police action against protestors unacceptable. The party seemed to be conscious of the fact that the continued loss in public perception would only harm them, particularly when elections are round the corner.

The AAP is fighting hard to claim opposition space in Delhi while the BJP does not want any third party, least of all a nascent AAP, to share that space with it or claim that space from it.

Goel tried to compensate the initial loss by holding a big protest march near Parliament, throwing vehicular movement in central Delhi completely out of gear for few hours on Monday. His predecessor Vijendra Gupta who too joined the protests, through his NGO Sampoorna.

AAP is trying to make-up or more than compensate its lack of organisational structure in terms of manpower by setting up helpline numbers and trying to address or respond to grievances through which it believes it could make a popular appeal and hit the right cord of pent up anger against the existing political and administrative set up. The battle is going to intensify, perhaps for the good, as it draws closer to the elections.

Does AAP have the capacity and strength to grab opposition space and be a real challenge to the Congress’s Sheila Dikshit government in Delhi? That’s a fiercely speculative issue for now. One thing is sure that this time around AAP picked up an issue that stirred wider social conscious. Competitive politics on the issue was an unavoidable by-product. Political parties are, after all, expected to fight for issues concerning day to day life of the people. The initiative by AAP has brought that to the fore.