Cong fears AAP return will hit its revival in Delhi

THE WORRY FOR THE GRAND OLD PARTY IS THAT ITS SUPPORT BASE IS ERODING AND SHIFTING TO THE AAP

NEWDELHI: Congress leaders have expressed confidence despite exit polls predicting bleak prospects in Delhi elections for the party but are worried that the return of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could hit their revival plans in the national capital.

Congress leaders PC Chacko and Kirti Azad on Sunday dismissed exit poll projections, saying the party will do much better.

“We have seen such exit polls in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. We will do better than what these surveys are predicting. I am not saying that we will get a majority but our position will improve,” Chacko said.

Azad, too, cited the outcome of assembly elections in Haryana to reject the projections.

“Exit polls in Haryana suggested that Congress will get three seats, but we got 31. Similarly in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, BJP was predicted to form the government but we came to power in all three states. I am confident that we will get a good number of seats in Delhi,” he said.

A Congress leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the party was in a good position in some seats but rued the lack of a credible face to take on chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. “We should have projected a face. Voters nowadays want to see the contenders for the chief minister’s post and accordingly take a call,” the leader from Delhi said.

“We cannot fight the elections just on the basis of our legacy or history. Past is past. Voters want to know our future policies and plans for development of Delhi. In 2013, we lost because of water and electricity and the AAP is coming back to power in 2019 because of water and electricity,” he added.

Though the Congress is upbeat about the fact that BJP is not projected to win the elections by the exit polls, the worry for the grand old party is that its support base is continuously eroding and shifting to the AAP as a result of which its revival plan could go for a toss.

In Delhi, both the Congress and the AAP vie for the same vote base, with the BJP’S share appearing to remain intact in the past several elections.

The BJP, too, was banking on a good show by the Congress to dethrone the AAP as they were confident that the party could cut into the AAP votes.

The Congress was heavily banking on the minority vote, with a section arguing that Muslims were disillusioned with the AAP in the wake of the silence of its leaders, especially Kejriwal, on the Shaheen Bagh issue.

But another group of senior leaders had a different take. They were of the view that Muslims would by and large vote for the AAP as it is in a much better position than the Congress to keep the BJP out of power in Delhi.