New Delhi, The battlelines are
finally drawn for the Delhi assembly elections. With Narendra Modi having set
the tone for the poll campaign of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today, the Aam
Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal should now be ready to counter the
image of the Prime Minister, as the BJP is seeking to make the contest a
showdown between both of them.
Modi
chose Ramlila Maidan as the venue to mount a scathing attack on Kejriwal who
had been sworn in as the Chief Minister of the AAP government in 2013, which
turned out to be of 49 days regime in Delhi. Perhaps, choice of Ramlila Maidan
as venue for Modi rally was not coincidental, rather it was chosen by the PM to
impress upon the voters to punish the leader who claims himself to be “anarchist”
after being sworn in as chief minister from this very place. He said also that
those who are anarchist should go to jungles to join naxalites.
The AAP
may have been ruling out the possibility of Delhi polls being a clash of
personality and image between Modi and Kejriwal, but given the poll pitch
raised by the PM today it is a foregone conclusion now that Kejriwal is set to
be pitted against the image of the Prime Minister, no matter who emerges as a
candidate to be made chief minister after the polls if BJP wins. Sources say
that it is going to be one like that. AAP has been saying that the BJP is
making the Delhi polls an artificial Kejriwal-Modi fight. The APP leaders have
also been referring to people saying that Modi for PM and Kejriwal for CM. But
the Modi’s image is set to pose challenge to Kejriwal in Delhi now. It is for
this reason that Kejriwal has said that the BJP in Delhi is a ship without
captain indicating that the party has no leadership in Delhi.
However,
by virtue of being in politics for two years now, Kejriwal also got the
political message in right earnest that the battlelines are now drawn between
him and Modi. This is the reason why Kejriwal hurriedly convened a press
conference to reply to all the allegations levelled against him by the Prime
Minister Modi.
What buttresses this point is
the fact that Kejriwal quickly sought to draw a comparison between the
performance of his 49-day rule in Delhi and that of the Modi government at the
Centre. He immediately referred to the issue of corruption which is being
raised quite often by Modi in his speeches. Kejriwal’s poser to the BJP was:
“My government in 49 days ended corruption in Delhi, but what did the Modi
government do in seven months.” “In these seven months, only Prime Minister Office
has been cleaned, when will the corruption be done away with,”he asked hinting
at the AAP’s newly-formed strategy to launch direct attack at Modi vis-a-vis
performance of his government.
He
tried to impress upon the people that Modi and the BJP have no positive agenda
left so they are making personal attack. From whatever reactions Kejriwal gave,
it was quite clear that from now on the AAP would target the Modi government,
as the Delhi poll campaign is unavoidably headed for a showdown between Kejriwal
and Modi.
Lending
credence to this is Kejriwal’s comment in which he said that Modi did not touch
upon the performance of the AAP government in 49 days, rather he went on to
attack the Congress government’s misrule in Delhi. “It is a proof that even Modi
did not have anything which could be criticized in terms of our
performance during 49 days,” Kejriwal said. The message that the AAP leader was
trying to send out was that now the focus of its campaign would be on comparing
49 days performance of the Kejriwal government and that of the Modi
dispensation in seven months.
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