Aam Aadmi Party Losing Voter Support in Delhi
The one-man show of Arvind Kejriwal is fast losing its clout among Delhi voters because of AAP’s constant failures in Delhi.
By Rakesh Raman
If MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) by-poll is any indication of the political temperature in Delhi, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) must be worried as the party could win only five of the 13 seats for which 45.9% of the 6.7 lakh voters exercised their franchise Sunday.
The by-poll result is a major setback for AAP – led by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal – considering the fact that the party won 67 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party BJP, which leads the 272-member civic body, could manage only three seats in the by-election to fill the positions that were rendered vacant after some MCD councillors won the Delhi state election in 2015.
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The MCD election is being considered an encouraging comeback for Congress which won five of the 13 seats. Congress could not win any seat in Delhi in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and the 2015 assembly elections.
“We have won 5 seats, and increased our vote share from 6.8% to nearly 30%. The people who traditionally voted for the Congress party have now come back to the party,” said Congress leader Ajay Maken.
The poor show in MCD by-poll will further jeopardize AAP’s position in the 2017 MCD elections that AAP aspired to win. The one-man show of Kejriwal is fast losing its clout among Delhi voters because of AAP’s constant failures in Delhi.
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During the past over one year of Kejriwal’s rule in Delhi, the living conditions for the people in the capital of India have gone from bad to worse.
Today, Delhi is perhaps the dirtiest city in the world. The electricity supply in residential areas is painfully erratic and the water bills are so high that Kejriwal and his gang of ministers seem to have taken the place of water mafia that operated in Delhi.
Kejriwal’s government through Delhi Jal Board is conniving with the corrupt managing committees of the Delhi (Dwarka) housing societies to extort money from residents in the form of hugely inflated water consumption charges, though Kejriwal promised free water for the residents.
The increasing number of cars is another major irritant in Delhi. Even the Delhi High Court has ruled that only one car per flat will be allowed in housing society parking lots.
But Kejriwal’s government has failed to check the menace and playing hand in glove with the corrupt managing committees of the housing societies that allow residents to park multiple vehicles inside the society premises under some secret deals with the erring residents.
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If that was not enough, now Kejriwal is hell-bent to give a slow death to Delhiites. How? The pollution levels in Delhi are so dangerous that they will put even the hydrogen bomb of North Korea to shame.
Meanwhile, in an ongoing poll on RMN News Service, when people were asked: “Are you satisfied with the work of AAP government in Delhi?,” 80% said they are not satisfied (results as on May 18, 2016).
But Kejriwal is squandering huge money on false publicity to hide his failures. According to Congress, Kejriwal’s government increased spending on information and publicity from Rs. 14.5 crore to Rs. 127.2 crore in its first year and for the current year it is expected to be more than Rs. 200 crore.
Congress says it has filed a complaint with a Supreme Court-appointed committee to find out how AAP is spending Delhi tax-payer’s money on advertisements in other regions.
By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company
