By Mubasshir Mushtaq
NEW DELHI
Voters in India's capital Delhi go to the polls for state elections on Saturday that could be the first real setback for the ruling party.
Several pre-poll surveys have given Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party reason to feel uneasy, placing them second.
The man in the spotlight is Arvind Kejriwal, a former civil servant and activist who jumped into politics in the November 2013 Delhi assembly election with his Aam Admi Party (Common Man’s Party) and became Delhi’s youngest chief minister.
Kejriwal, a former revenue official, was Delhi’s chief minister for 49 days before resigning in February 2014 over barriers to passing a promised anti-corruption bill. Delhi has since remained under the President’s authority for almost a year.
“There is only one man who is capable of stopping Modi wave and his name is Arvind Kejriwal,” said political analyst Mustafa Khan.
Modi defeated Kejriwal for a parliamentary seat in the northern city of Varanasi during the May 2014 general election. Since then a "Modi wave" seems to be spreading through parts of the country, with the Bharatiya Janata Party defeating the previous ruling Congress party in northern Haryana and western Maharashtra state elections.
Saturday’s vote in Delhi is seen by many as an evaluation of Modi’s leadership.
“It would be an interesting political combat reminiscent of the fight between David and Goliath,” Khan said, adding that Kejriwal has an edge over Modi.
Senior journalist Seema Mustafa agrees.
“You know the electoral scene has begun to shift when anchors and television celebrities who had reviled an individual and his party to the point of blacking him out for the best part of a year start flocking to him,” she said of Kejriwal.
36 seats are needed to form the government in Delhi city, where the election results will be announced on Tuesday.
In his final election speech on Wednesday, Modi came down heavily on opinion pollsters, calling them “bazaaru log” [people who can be bought].
“What kind of people are they? In public life, there should be no place for such lies,” Modi said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s woes were compounded on Tuesday when the party described northeast Indians as “immigrants” in its manifesto, drawing condemnation from political parties and civil rights groups.
The party regretted the use of the label, saying it was a “printing error.”
Kiran Bedi, a retired police official and former colleague of Kejriwal, recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and was immediately declared its "chief ministerial" candidate, leaving senior party leaders fuming.
Rahul Gandhi, the vice-president of Congress party, accused Modi of political hypocrisy at a rally on Wednesday.
“He [Modi] wears Rs. 10 lakh [$1600] suit. Newspapers report that this is not Make in India. That too is Make in UK. And then he tells you about Make in India and employment,” Gandhi said.
The Aam Aadmi Party has focused less on personal attacks and more on basic issues like power, water, transportation and women’s safety.
