The Delhi Assembly elections approaches closer yet the BJP’s candidate for the post of CM remains unclear. According to party officials, no decision has been taken yet about BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in the run up to the Delhi Assembly election.
According to Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, who is in-charge of Delhi BJP for the assembly polls, the party is going to contest elections on a positive note highlighting the achievements of the Narendra Modi government and register a “grand” success.
The party takes decisions as per strategy and any decision regarding chief ministerial candidate will be announced whenever it is made, he said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The Indian National Congress is also yet to name its candidates against the Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal, for the February 2020 polls. Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has aready launched its ‘Kejriwal Phir Se’ (Kejriwal once again) campaign slogan for the upcoming Assembly elections in the National Capital.
Delhi BJP seems to be in a big dilemma over naming its chief ministerial candidate. After failing to form government in Maharashtra and Jharkhand the BJP faces another major challenge in Delhi. The challenge is crucial as BJP has not been able to win the Assembly elections in Delhi for the last 21 years. Hence, the party is trying to come up with a strategic game plan to win the state.
Recently, the party also found itself in a controversy after Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who is also the state BJP’s election in-charge, hinted that the Delhi BJP’s state unit president, Manoj Tiwari, will be the chief minister face. However, within hours he had to take his words back.
Manoj Tiwari also defended the party and said, “Under my leadership as the party president of Delhi BJP, we have defeated AAP in municipal elections and will defeat them in Delhi too. As far as BJP’s CM candidate is concerned, it is the parliamentary board of the party that takes a call on such issues.”
The BJP has been known to fight all the Assembly elections in Delhi after projecting a chief minister face, but who will be the party’s CM’s face this time is a big question? In the last Assembly elections held in February 2015, the party brought Kiran Bedi from nowhere, just 20 days before the elections as a face-saver, which failed miserably. This time, the most probable candidates according to some sources are Union minister Harsh Vardhan and Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari.
According to some sources, the party is facing major factionalism challenge ahead of the crucial Assembly election. Several MPs are reportedly not very comfortable working under the leadership of Tiwari, and at various points they either skip the events organised by the state unit or take their own course on various crucial issues. One such example was the party’s Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Goel’s campaign against the Odd-Even scheme which was implemented by the Kejriwal government earlier this month.
The 2020 Delhi Assembly elections are being widely anticipated as both the major parties BJP and INC have witnessed major victory and losses in Lok Sabha elections of 2019 and State Assembly elections in the last six months. With another big challenger in the face of AAP, Delhi elections will be an interesting watch as all the three parties contest for the 70 assembly seats in the capital.
