Before she wasn’t, Sheila Dixit was a popular Chief Minister, the face of Delhi for 15 years. For the last three years though, the Congress has been on a seemingly terminal downward spiral in the national capital. Reduced to the third spot in the 2013 elections with just eight seats, they were decimated in the 2015 Assembly elections. With no seats and just nine percent of the vote share, India’s oldest party has been all but written off from the capital.
In the results of the Delhi Municipal bypolls, the Congress and its Delhi chief Ajay Maken finally have something to smile about.
Wresting Votes Back From AAP
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The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has been BJP’s bastion for some time now. Even now, in the 13 wards that went to polls, the BJP has the highest vote share (34.11 percent). The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has 29 percent, followed by the Congress at 24 percent, yet both have more seats than the BJP.
For AAP, the result is decent but not spectacular. In the 2015 elections, they had a massive 54 percent vote share and 67 out of 70 seats. In these bypolls, they have managed to hold on to at least some of those votes. The BJP seems to have been a victim of the first-past-the-post system and its vote share hasn’t been converted into seats. A spate of strikes and protests by MCD sanitation workers couldn’t have helped the incumbents.
In years past, electoral contests in Delhi have been two-way affairs between the BJP and the Congress. After Arvind Kejriwal’s massive victory, many thought that AAP had replaced the Congress as Delhi’s primary political force. However, based on these elections, it seems that the Congress is once again on its way to becoming a force to reckon with in Delhi.
For Ajay Maken and the Congress, a Ray of Hope
Delhi Congress Pradesh Committee chairman Ajay Maken inherited a party in decline. He went from being a Union Minister and then the chief ministerial candidate, to presiding over the state unit of a party that had no presence in the state assembly. After a series of defeats, this is the first victory, however minor, for the Congress in the capital.
It gives Congress workers in Delhi room for hope, but not complacency. To turn five seats out of 13 in an MCD bypoll to significant numbers in the 2019 general elections or the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections will take serious, sustained work on the ground.
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