Around 15.5 million voters across Delhi will head to the polling booths starting 7am on Wednesday in the first electoral battle of 2025, the culmination of a high-voltage assembly contest for the Capital that will have deep reverberations in national politics.
Across 70 seats — ranging from the bustling markets of Lajpat Nagar and Rajinder Nagar and the middle-class enclaves of GK-1 and Civil Lines, to the snaking alleys of Chandni Chowks and the tree-lined avenues of Jor Bagh — the Capital will decide the futures of 699 candidates in 13,766 polling stations in what is the most closely fought assembly elections in years.
The electorate will straddle impossible contrasts — urban and rural, rich and poor, and castes and communities of every shade and ethnicity — as people from the sprawling colonial-era Lutyens Delhi and potholed nightmare of Burari, pigeonholes stuffed with students in GTB Nagar and office-goer cacophony of Connaught Place, and the languid grandeur of Old Delhi and working-class hum of Okhla, come together in deciding the fate of the national capital.
Special commissioner of police (crime) Devesh Chandra Srivastava, who is the state police nodal officer for assembly elections, said the police force is geared up for polling day, with over 42,000 personnel from the Delhi Police, along with 220 companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) and 19,000 home guards from the Capital, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on duty on polling day.
“After the polling process is over, we’ll ensure that that the EVMs and all polling related materials are escorted back to their storage rooms safely,” he said.
The votes will be counted on February 8. The AAP won 62 of 70 seats in the 2020 polls, with the BJP bagging the remaining eight.
Despite the modest size of the electorate, Delhi has always commanded outsized heft on the national political stage due to the prestige associated with ruling the Capital and the fact that its population reflects the diversity of broader national demographics. But over the past five years, unprecedented acrimony between the elected state government and the lieutenant governor (LG) derailed local governance and plunged the Capital into a morass of toxic air, crumbling infrastructure, rising crime and policy dysfunction.
Ruchika Dhir, a 43-year-old IT professional who votes in east Delhi, hopes people turn out in large numbers to vote despite it being a working day.
“It’s not only our right but moral responsibility to vote. The city needs to be in good hands and I hope the government takes good care of the Capital and its people,” she said.
The elections are a referendum of sorts for the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won landslide victories in 2015 and 2020 but spent the better part of the past five years battling corruption allegations that send virtually its entire front line leadership behind bars. Born out of the cauldron of the anti-corruption movement in the Capital, the AAP has sought to train focus on its central welfare plank by offering a bouquet of 16 sops ranging from cash hand-outs to poor women to free treatment for all senior citizens. It has sought to blunt anti-incumbency by dropping nearly a third of its incumbent lawmakers and challenging the opponents to come up with an alternative with its main face, former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The party has been bruised by a string of high-profile arrests over the last three years and a number of policies stalled by LG VK Saxena. The elections come at a crucial time for the party that has battled a shrinking national footprint after its victory in Punjab in 2022.
An AAP official said the party ran a positive campaign focused on the work done by their government. “People are with the AAP... According to our estimate, the AAP will form the government. The women are supporting us with full enthusiasm and we appeal to all to vote for AAP and reject abusive BJP and its hooliganism... If the women give us a further push, we may even cross 60,” said the official.
Its principal challenger, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping to ride on anti-incumbency and middle-class anger to its first victory in the Capital in 27 years. The party has failed to breach double digits in the last two assembly elections but is fancying its chances after stalled work across Delhi and crumbling civic infrastructure triggered palpable anger among ordinary people. The party is hoping to repeat its commanding performance in the 2024 general elections when it swept all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi. It deployed a phalanx of central leaders led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who hammered the AAP on corruption and misgovernance.
The party has matched the AAP in welfare outreach and has talked up the tax breaks accorded to the middle-class in the Union Budget to secure its traditional vote bank. It will be hoping for some splintering in the AAP’s core base among poorer voters and marginalised castes as a fallout of its disciplined campaign that largely stayed away from communal issues.
Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said he is confident that the BJP will form government in the city.
“We will win on the back of the hard work of our workers and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. Kejriwal has looted and deceived Delhi.”
The Congress is the third player in the triangular contest, and has run a largely lukewarm campaign centered around the Gandhi family and the record of the then Sheila Dikshit government. The party has not won a single seat in the last two assembly elections but it can still make a difference in a tight contest, especially in seats with minority and marginalised caste voters.
Delhi Congress president Devender Yadav said the party’s preparation started months before the election dates were announced.
“We have been interacting with people since our Nyay Yatra in December, and looking at a big shift in the political scenario of Delhi. It is very likely that when the results come this time, we may see a Congress government in Delhi. Data may suggest that the AAP has maximum seats and can win, but the mood of the people is different this time, and they have faith in Rahul Gandhi and the Congress,” he said.
The battle for Delhi is the first major electoral battle this year and will shape national politics. It comes just months after the BJP won a landslide victory in Maharashtra and stole an unexpected win over the Congress in Haryana. The party will look to maintain this momentum in Delhi in order to bolster its political capital and push through big-ticket proposals.
For the AAP, the challenger is stiffer. The Capital is the cradle for the party and its founder, Kejriwal, who has sought to use his personal appeal to net votes for the party. Winning these elections will be pivotal for the party’s long-term future and national ambitions and influence the workings of the larger Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. The Congress will also hope to put up a decent show after its dismal performances in Haryana and Maharashtra in order to strengthen its image not just nationally but also within the Opposition bloc.
Key to the outcome in Delhi will be demographics such as women, the poor, marginalised castes and middle-class colonies. Over the last 10 years, the AAP has maintained a stranglehold on the first three groups due to its governance delivery and welfare promises while the fourth is a loyal BJP voter base. This time, in a fiercely fought elections, both major parties have made a play for these swing voters.
Over the last week, the political temperature has been rising with both the AAP and the BJP blaming each other over manipulation of electoral rolls, violation of the model code of conduct, and bribing voters.
Among the issues that are likely to play on the voters’ minds, welfare, corruption, the condition of civic infrastructure and gang-related crimes. But these elections will also bookend a bruising five years for the Capital, which has been beset by communal strife, crime, infrastructure collapse and repeated clashes between two arms of the government that has hamstrung Delhi.
Governance of the national capital is split between the elected state government, which is in charge of all areas except land, law and order (known as reserved subjects), which are in turn under the Centre’s control. The new government will have to navigate this complex governance terrain all over again.
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