New Delhi: For 30 years during which she has voted in several local, assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Bilkis has been a loyal Congress supporter. That will change on 4 December, she says, when Delhi votes in state assembly polls in which the Congress is seeking a fourth successive term to rule the city-state.

“This time, literally for a change, I will vote for the main opposition," the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says the 72-year-old Bilkis, who goes by one name and makes a living going door-to-door selling clothes tailored by her sons.

The shift in Bilkis’s loyalty is a worrying sign for the Congress; her extended family has 17 votes. More worrying for the Congress is the fact that Bilkis’s ire is not targeted at three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit or the local unit of the party. Instead, it is directed at the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) that’s in power at the centre.

“It is one thing to say that a party’s policies are pro-poor and it is another thing that a government becomes so corrupt that it quietly drills a hole in the pockets of those who cannot afford anything, even without them knowing it," said Bilkis, a resident of Jaffrabad in East Delhi.

The latest round of assembly elections, including in Delhi, are the first in which the non-performance of the central government and the corruption allegations that have dogged UPA in its second term have become a liability for state Congress units.

“The shadow of misgovernance of the UPA looms large over whatever credible work has been done by Sheila Dikshit in the last five years," said Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst and fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

“It is true that the image of the Congress government in Delhi is not as bad as compared to the UPA government at the centre. However, Dikshit’s government could suffer much more because of the unpopularity of the UPA," he added.

Making things even more difficult for Dikshit is the disruptive presence of the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Along with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), it has forced a structural change in Delhi’s electoral equation—from a two-way face-off between the Congress and BJP to a multi-polar contest.

Though a political greenhorn, the AAP, led by anti-corruption activist-turned politician Kejriwal, is expected to make an impressive debut in elections to the 70-member Delhi assembly— some claim the best ever by a new party in a long time.

Anti-incumbency

Across Delhi, an anti-Congress wave is palpable. Voters in constituencies such as Laxmi Nagar, Dwarka, Patparganj, New Delhi, Rohtas Nagar, Kalkaji and Vishwas Nagar— all of which elected Congress members in the last polls—say the two biggest issues this time are the inability of the ruling party to contain inflation and ensure the safety of women, highlighted by the December 2012 gangrape and murder of a young woman.

“Rising prices, especially that of vegetables, is a big problem. While the Delhi government may not be directly responsible for it, we do feel that Sheila Dikshit’s government did not do enough to control it," said Kuldeep Singh, who owns a tailoring shop and resides in East Delhi’s Laxmi Nagar area.

The legislator from Laxmi Nagar is Ashok Kumar Walia, a political veteran and a minister in Dikshit’s government.

This time, Singh plans to vote for the AAP, which has fielded Vinod Kumar Binny, a former ward councillor, because he says it is the only party that has “fought for the people".

Citizens are angry about a lot of things—perceived corruption, ineffective service delivery, deficient access to drinking water, inflated electricity bills and high value-added tax.

To be sure, there are some angry voters that still favour the Congress because of a perception that neither BJP nor AAP is a credible alternative.

“Yes, there is corruption in the state government but at least they get our work done; with the BJP, we don’t even hope (for) that much," said Reyaz Ahmed, a 32-year-old who runs a small furniture shop in the Seelampur neighbourhood.

Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed of the Congress party has been the legislator for Seelampur since 1993, when he won on a Janata Dal ticket. He has won thrice after that, as an independent candidate in 1998 and on a Congress ticket in 2003 and 2008. If he gets re-elected, which he is extremely hopeful of, it will be his fifth consecutive term as a legislator. Ahmed says there isn’t even a hint of anti-incumbency against him.

“Now, in our rallies, we do not even talk about winning. Now, it’s only about how much we increase our victory margin from the last time," he said.

Political analyst Sanjay Kumar expects BJP to win the most seats in the elections, followed by the Congress and AAP in that order.

While AAP officially denies it, Kejriwal has since the beginning of the campaign been the chief ministerial candidate of the party. BJP, after much infighting and confusion in its Delhi state unit, has declared Harsh Vardhan, a doctor by profession and legislator from Krishna Nagar, as its chief ministerial candidate.

“In elections, it is all about personalities. Congress has the advantage of Sheila Dikshit. Even though her popularity has gone down, she is still very well known. Kejriwal is extremely popular, in fact, he is the rising star in Delhi politics. However, Harsh Vardhan is not as dynamic, so the strategy of the BJP is to shield him and instead say that in BJP, individuals do not matter and it is the party which is as a whole contesting elections," Sanjay Kumar said.

He added that this is a smart strategy on the part of BJP as it has helped contain dissidence, which had been threatening to roil its prospects.

Access to services

A narrow road off the Mehrauli-Badarpur road leads to a heavily congested and badly maintained neighbourhood called Sangam Vihar. Drains overflow, garbage mounds dot the area, and residents complain about lack of access to clean drinking water and electricity.

The home of Anil Kumar Singh, a 42-year old stationery shop owner in Sangam Vihar, has no drinking water supply and his family has to rely on bottled water. “Imagine if a government in a state like Delhi cannot provide something as basic as drinking water, how does it expect its people to support them?" asked Singh, who migrated to Delhi from Bihar 20 years ago.

For unauthorized colonies such as Gandhi Camp in the Sriniwaspuri area, all parties in the fray have promised a package for urban development that will focus on transportation, sewage, clean drinking water and access to healthcare. The Congress has gone a step further. In the run-up to the assembly elections, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi doled out free land holding rights to people in several unauthorized neighbourhoods in Delhi.

Not much has changed in the living conditions in these neighbourhoods in years.

“Ours is a classic example of neglect and apathy," said Mohammad Shaukeen, a 32-year-old taxi driver and resident of Gandhi Camp. “Nothing has changed for us. We still walk 3km to get drinking water, our children still wade through congested roads and overflowing drains."

Even so, Shaukeen and many others in this Muslim-dominated settlement said they would vote for the Congress.

Young voters

According to Delhi’s state election commission, the state has 405,850 voters between the ages of 18 and 19. While no official data is available on the further age break-up, the number of first-time voters in this election is set to be much more if those between the age group of 18-22 are also accounted for.

In the last two years, Delhi has witnessed a series of anti-corruption protests led by Anna Hazare and anti-rape protests in December last year which snowballed after thousands of young men and women took to the streets.

The anger of young voters got channelized through these protests. In the line of fire was UPA, which in its second term has also been embroiled in a series of corruption scandals. The Congress government in Delhi too was attacked for its inefficiency in dealing with fears around women’s safety.

Interestingly, the disenchantment with the Congress has not automatically translated into an advantage for BJP, although the naming of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the party’s prime ministerial candidate has made the party a popular choice for young voters.

One such voter is Diksha Jain, a 21-year-old student from Dwarka who is preparing for her chartered accountancy examination; she doesn’t go out after dark because of safety concerns.

“I like Narendra Modi, his speeches are very inspirational. There is no one in the Congress I can think of who equals him in his public persona," she said, adding that she would vote for BJP because the “regime change" in the 2014 general elections should begin from Delhi.

All eyes on AAP

Kejriwal, too, commands considerable support among the young. His image of being an aggressive and disruptionist young leader who quit the bureaucracy has helped his fledgling party gain traction among a section of young voters in Delhi. AAP was an offshoot of Hazare’s anti-corruption movement; Hazare and Kejriwal parted ways when the latter turned to politics.

Regardless of whether AAP reaps the success it claims it will, the party has come to dominate the public mindspace of Delhi, judging from the buzz among its committed rank and file, ordinary voters and even the party’s critics.

Given the vacuum in Indian politics, especially with organized parties failing to recalibrate themselves to a new Indian reality driven by aspirations, AAP has a never-before opportunity—all the more given its promise to do away with business-as-usual politics.

“We are a disenchanted lot. We see our representatives only in photos or on television debates. The first time that someone ever reached out to my family was when a group of AAP volunteers came to enquire about water and electricity supply in our area," said Alok Rai Gupta, a tea seller in the Patparganj area.

For a party that had less than a year’s time to prepare for its first elections and is seen largely as the off-shoot of an anti-corruption movement backed mainly by the urban middle class, AAP faced two big challenges—creating a cadre of volunteers and making the party more appealing to the semi-urban, lower-income groups.

The party shifted from its anti-corruption platform to mobilize support around everyday issues such as inflated utility bills and insufficient access to basic services such as water and electricity.

In the New Delhi constituency itself, populated largely by government officials and their families, this strategy seems to have worked. And here Kejriwal is boldly contesting against Dikshit.

Some opinion polls claim that Kejriwal may pull off the biggest upset in this election. According to a survey published last week in The Economic Times, Kejriwal is set to beat Dikshit by “a wide margin". The survey, done by a polling firm called TNS, covered 2,101 registered voters in the constituency.

Many voters in the constituency, mostly government officials who did not want to be identified, said Dikshit as an MLA has been more “apathetic" towards her constituency than she has been towards the state.

“This is the chief minister’s constituency and we have no drinking water supply in our homes. For years we voted for her simply because the BJP never fielded a candidate in our constituency worthy of any fight. Now is the time for Kejriwal," said Babita Negi, a 36-year-old homemaker who resides in the constituency.

When asked why she wants to wants to give up on the comfort of belonging to a chief minister’s constituency, Negi chuckles.

“The man who will get elected from here is also set to be the next chief minister."

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