AAP Ready With Balloons Amid Closer-Than-Predicted Delhi Civic Body Fight

Balloons and celebratory posters are ready at the AAP office in Delhi even as vote-counting for the the civic body is on, and the fight looks much closer than an AAP landslide predicted by exit polls.

At 9.15 am, BJP had crossed the halfway mark as early leads for all 250 seats came in. But the positions were shifting almost every minute.

While the AAP has swept the past two Delhi assembly polls, it is the BJP which has controlled the MCD for 15 years, thus controlling many of the daily services such as garbage-collection and street-paving.

The AAP wants to change it this time, pitching Arvind Kejriwal’s face and the idea that having the same party in power at all levels in the national capital will mean better civic development.

The AAP was confident of winning “more than 200” of the 250 wards, and exit polls mostly kept it at 150 — a big win nonetheless.

AAP has claimed that it has won public trust through its work in Delhi and this would see them through. The BJP, it has said, has not been able to meet a basic parameter like cleaning up the city in 15 years.

The BJP, as is its norm, banked on a glitzy campaign, roping in Union ministers and state Chief Ministers and the governance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It targeted the anti-corruption image that AAP has been building since its inception with a series of sting videos.

Insisting that he does not need to respond, Arvind Kejriwal said, “MCD elections are becoming quite clear, it’s BJP’s 10 videos versus Kejriwal’s 10 guarantees. Let’s wait till December 4, people of Delhi will give a reply to all those videos”.

Mr Kejriwal had announced “10 guarantees” ahead of the civic elections – which included cleaning up the city, including landfills and ending corruption in the civic body. AAP’s trade wing announced ’10 guarantees’ that included de-sealing of shops and resolving conversion and parking charges.