Amid snap polls predicting a neck-to-neck contest between the AAP and the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached his party’s headquarters late on Monday evening to pick candidates for the 70 Assembly constituencies in poll-bound Delhi.
The BJP’s central election committee, which includes the PM along with party president Amit Shah, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj among others, started its meeting at 7.35 pm.
Meanwhile, opinion polls had already started speculating on the chances of the BJP, which inducted the high-profile ex-police officer Kiran Bedi as the face of the party’s campaign in Delhi. In a poll conducted by ABP News-Nielson, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal still topped popularity ratings as chief ministerial candidate against Bedi and the Congress’ Ajay Maken.
The poll showed that 47 per cent of the people surveyed preferred Kejriwal, followed by Bedi, who polled 44 per cent votes. Maken was a distant third in the poll with just about 7 per cent popularity ratings.
Close fight Altogether, it is a close fight between the AAP and the BJP, according to the poll. Forty-six per cent of the respondents in this particular poll chose the AAP while 45 per cent picked the BJP. The Congress polled only 8 per cent of the respondents’ votes.
The BJP has inducted several new faces in the past one week, including Krishna Tirath of the Congress, Shazia Ilmi and Vinod Binni of the AAP and, of course, Bedi. Ilmi has expressed her unwillingness to contest while Bedi, Binni and Tirath have joined the BJP on the premise they will get ticket.
The prospect of party ticket being given to “outsiders” has evoked sharp responses and resentment in the party ranks. Already, party MP Manoj Tiwari and leaders like Jagdish Mukhi, who was harbouring ambitions of being projected as CM candidate, have voiced their dissent.