The BJP has pulled out all stops as campaign steps up for the Delhi Assembly elections.
Besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing four rallies on January 31 and February 1, 3 and 4, at Vishwas Nagar, Dwarka, Rohini and Ambedkar Nagar respectively, all the top leaders will be campaigning in the days to come.
On Thursday, for instance, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj is addressing two rallies, Education Minister Smriti Irani four, and the BJP’s CM candidate Kiran Bedi, three. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been invited for two rallies, while former cricketer and MP Navjot Singh Sidhu will address three.
Even as the star campaigners will flood the city, the party’s resident strategist, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, will devote two hours every day to sorting out internal matters, interacting with the media and handling the BJP’s day-to-day affairs.
The party has also pressed its MPs, especially from adjoining States such as UP, Rajasthan and Haryana, into service. According to Savitribai Phule, BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, her focus area will be Trilokpuri in east Delhi. Trilokpuri is an under-developed part of the city with large slum clusters. It is a mostly SC and Muslim dominated area from where the AAP had won in 2013.
This time, the BJP has fielded the widow of its former MLA Kiran Vaid from Trilokpuri.
All these efforts are in addition to the micro-management of elections that is done at the level of all 11,736 booths in the city. The BJP has a 10-15-member committee to monitor each booth in the city that takes the head count of its active workers several notches above the other contenders like the AAP and the Congress.