Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi

The sun is shining once again on the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi. There is more than a kiran of hope for the BJP in what is turning out to be a tough and bitterly contested poll.

With former IPS officer Kiran's Bedi's induction in the party and her anointment as the CM candidate, Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal will face a tough fight in the Capital. A snap poll by the India Today Group-Cicero has predicted that the two chief ministerial candidates of the two rival parties will have a neck-to-neck contest in the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections slated for February 7. The latest India Today-Cicero Delhi snap poll 2015 shows that Kejriwal is the most suitable chief ministerial candidate for 41 per cent of the people while 38 per cent would like to see Bedi as the head of the new government. Ajay Maken of the Congress is running a distant third securing support of only 12 per cent.

In other words, Kejriwal is no longer the undisputed choice of the people to become the chief minister. He still might be the most favoured but Bedi's plunge into politics as BJP's chief ministerial candidate seems to have spoiled AAP's party. The scenario was completely different till Bedi came into the picture with a political masterstroke by the BJP which decided to make the former IPS officer the face of its campaign to stop AAP's juggernaut on a roll.

Kejriwal was way ahead of all his rivals in the popularity charts for the chief ministership. The last India Today-CICERO Delhi snap poll 2015, conducted earlier this month, had shown that Kejriwal was preferred as the CM by 35 per cent of the respondents. His closest rival was Harsh Vardhan of BJP who was the choice of 23 per cent people. For Harsh Vardhan it was a rise from 19 per cent compared to the previous month while Kejriwal had retained his December popularity rating.

The gap between Kejriwal and Bedi is merely three per cent. It is easily a flying start for Bedi, considering the fact that she joined the poll battle in the middle of the campaign for the February 7 elections. A majority of Delhi voters, as many as 51 per cent, said that the chief ministerial candidate would be the major factor in deciding which party they would vote for.

The party and issues were only secondary considerations. Most of the people surveyed agreed that Kiran Bedi was brought in by BJP to counter Kejriwal. It is a reflection of AAP leader's strong hold over the minds of people in the city. No wonder that Kejriwal was voted as the most popular leader in Delhi, even ahead of PM Modi. Forty per cent of respondents said that the anti-corruption leader was the most popular while 31 per cent voted for Modi.

Thirty seven per cent of the respondents said that Bedi was in the polls to counter Kejriwal and only 28 per cent felt that she was the natural choice for BJP to be the CM.

There is no confusion in the minds of the people that Bedi's decision to join BJP was right. An overwhelming 65 per cent said that it was the right decision. The people also think that there should be a presidential form of debate between Kejriwal and Bedi on television, a challenge turned down by BJP's CM face. A majority of 72 per cent of the people favoured the debate between Kejriwal and Bedi, the two estranged colleagues from Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement. The survey findings are based on the opinion expressed by a sample of 1,910 people, 46.5 per cent of whom were women, 12.9 per cent Muslims, 16.8 per cent Schedule Caste and four per cent Sikhs.

Runaway

Surprisingly, 30 per cent of respondents still label Kejriwal as a runaway who resigned after ruling only for 49 days. Being a runaway is a tag AAP leader is desperately trying to drop as he is busy convincing people that his government will last full term. Twenty-five per cent people consider him to be a revolutionary and only 14 endorsed that he was an anarchist.