The date for Delhi polls may have been announced today, but the battle cry had already been sounded over the weekend, PM Modi himself.

The battle for Delhi is officially under way. The date may have been announced today, but the battle cry had already been sounded over the weekend, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. And the clues to who will win on 7 February are to be found in his Ramleela Maidan speech.

Launching the party’s poll campaign, Modi used the word ‘gareeb’ 33 times; almost once in every minute of his half-hour speech. In his 2013 speech, Modi had favoured a different G word with the poor remembered just twice.

The reason for this change in Modi’s vocabulary and why G for Gandhi has been replaced by G for gareeb: AAP’s influence among the urban poor—the migrant labour, rickshawpullers, auto-drivers and those who live in slums. This voter, the truly aam aadmi, can spoil Modi’s party.

For the past few months the BJP has been trying to woo them. First with promises of legalizing all unauthorized colonies, then by talking about cheaper and better electricity and finally by talking more and more about the gareeb.

The Delhi election will be completely different from the other assembly polls that have taken place since Modi became PM. In Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress was in power — either on its own or with an ally — and there was a lot of anger against it. The anti-incumbency sentiment combined with the incompetence of Congress leadership to help the BJP make handsome gains in these states.

But in Delhi, Kejriwal’s popularity, his party’s clean image, marginalization of the Congress and the abating Modi wave will ensure that the BJP doesn’t start with a huge advantage.

The BJP’s other strategy — Amit Shah’s formula of communal polarization— also won’t work in Delhi. Results of the clashes in Trilokpuri and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti’s inflammatory speeches didn’t raise the communal temperature in Delhi and the project had to be abandoned.

The dynamics have changed, and so has the BJP strategy. Modi himself has entered the fray himself like a proxy CM candidate, doling out promises and making an all-out effort to woo the urban poor away from Kejriwal.

The Delhi election is a test of Modi’s popularity, and the toughest since the Lok Sabha elections.

Modi would love to decimate Kejriwal. After the decline of the Congress, the only possible challenge to Modi will come from regional satraps. The Janata Parivar in UP and Bihar, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and Naveen Patnaik in Orissa could be next on Modi’s hit-list. But Kejriwal has the advantage of being in the heart of Delhi. His victory—unlikely but not impossible—can establish AAP as a rallying point for all anti-Modi voters. If Kejriwal wins, it can have a cascading effect on the morale of his other regional rivals.

The BJP has already committed a tactical blunder – the kind reminiscent of another kind of battle. At the beginning of World War II, the German army could have forced Britain to surrender if it had continued to march towards Dunkirk in France, trapping several thousand Allied forces. But the Germans stopped for a few days, allowing Winston Churchill to evacuate nearly 3.5 lakh trapped soldiers.

The BJP too had Kejriwal on the mat after his rout in Lok Sabha polls. Modi must have hoped that Kejriwal would fade away after the humiliation in Varanasi. But Modi and Shah made the mistake of giving him time to revive AAP.

Modi’s attack on Kejriwal and his party during the Delhi speech suggest that the AAP is still a formidable adversary. He is hoping – and rightly – that a Delhi election rout will be a death blow to AAP, from which even Kejriwal cannot recover and regroup.

Whatever be the outcome, it is in everybody’s interest that the Delhi polls get out of the way as soon as possible. It will ensure that Modi gets out of poll mode and gets back to governing—a task he has been elected for.

Several important decisions are in abeyance because of the impending polls. In Delhi, lots of ordinances and reforms have been put on the backburner because the government is busy dealing with Kejriwal.

And in Srinagar, for instance, the PDP and the BJP have delayed announcement of their alliance. This has been done because of fears that it will harm Modi’s campaign by giving his critics the opportunity to argue that the BJP has struck an opportunistic alliance with a party that favours self-rule and Article 370.

So, whoever triumphs at the polls, it is a win-win situation for voters. And that’s the real good news now that the election dates have been announced.