DELHI ELECTIONS, DAGGERS OUT AS CAMPAIGN INTENSIFIES

NEW DELHI: It has been a long time that television has featured a classical journalistic interview. Ravish Kumar of NDTV India caught up with Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for chief minister of Delhi Kiran Bedi and threw some questions at her with the cynicism of the proverbial hack. She kept telling him that she did not have time for him, she clearly did not like his questions, she tried to intimidate him but he politely gave it back ---even offering her mulethi for a sore throat when she told him not to make her talk loudly--and followed her, getting in that last question even as she tried to get away.

The interview is all over the social media with Kumar expressing surprise. But the response is a clear indication of how fed up viewers are with the absurd talk shows on television every night with the same anchors and the same ‘experts’ with Kumar’s interaction with Bedi coming in as a breath of fresh air as it gave an insight into the former cop’s personality, with the persistent banter and questions provoking her into extending the interview and getting caught in her own arguments.The big plus was that in the line of questioning Kumar did not weigh on the side of any other party, with the questions not revolving around personalities but around Bedi’s own thoughts and views on issues.

A welcome change from efforts by the television talk shows every night to turn the Delhi election into a Bedi versus Kejriwal (Aam Aadmi party chief Arvind Kejriwal) affair even as the two try to move away from this specific to the larger plane of a political contest. The fight is intense, and the daggers are out. The BJP from being on an offensive, has gone into defensive mode, as surveys report AAP to be on an ascendant. Bedi has been unable to attract the middle class in the manner that the BJP top brass clearly hoped for and has not addressed public meetings after her vocal chords gave way in the first couple of days of her campaign. The BJP leaders in Delhi are still sulking and party president Amit Shah has had to move in to take over the campaign over the next week, till February 7.

The campaign is turning ugly as a recent advertisement taken out by the BJP (see above) demonstrated. It mocks Kejriwal for having taken the support of the Congress to form the government after the December 2013 polls in Delhi. With a garlanded photograph of Anna Hazare, Kejriwal’s one time mentor in India Against Corruption, the advertisement seemed to imply that the AAP leader had gone against Hazare altogether. Kejriwal was, however, out almost immediately with a tweet, “Nathuram Godse killed Gandhiji on this day in 1948. BJP has killed Anna in its ad today. Shudn't BJP apologise?” The advertisement appeared on January 30, the day of Gandhi’s martyrdom.

Kejriwal thus blunted the advertisement, more so as a day before Hazare was on television saying that he was going to start a protest agitation against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.

The BJP has also gone on the back foot on the issue of statehood for Delhi. AAP has been demanding this, but divisions within the BJP are so great that the party has decided not to bring out a manifesto at all. The BJP was scheduled to release its manifesto this week but now Union minister Ananth Kumar has told reporters: “There will be no manifesto. We will bring out a vision document to implement Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Kiran Bedi’s vision.” The BJP has been wrestling with the issue for a while, with opinion divided within the party and the government. Earlier, in 2013 the BJP had no hesitation in demanding statehood for Delhi but now that it has a government at the centre it has had second thoughts, to a point where even a manifesto is not being released to save it from direct controversy on this issue.

Shah has brought in a bevy of central ministers to manage the elections. PM Modi however is being expected to deliver what the party and Bedi were clearly not able to with his four public meetings scheduled over the next few days. Interestingly, reporters in the field have clearly been doing their mathematics with the media reporting that Minister Smriti Irani made ten references to PM Modi in her eleven minute campaign speech at a public meeting in Delhi. She mentioned Bedi only once and that too with PM Modi.

The BJP used to large crowds in Delhi has been finding it difficult to fill seats at its election meetings now. A Ramlila rally with poor attendance was the reason for the gear shift with PM Modi and Shah deciding to ‘outsource’ the election and bring in Bedi just a couple of weeks before polling. This does not seem to have galvanised the voters in favour of the BJP to the extent hoped, with the party rushing to cover ground with hastily conceived advertisements, and ‘war room’ tactics that might not have the time required to fructify.