By Sidharth Mishra

Campaign has ended for one of the most bitterly fought elections in the city. Ever since the Delhi Assembly came into existence in its present avatar in 1993, one doesn’t remember an election where the development of the city was reduced to such a cameo role in the poll narrative.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in his interview given to at least four English and same number of Hindi dailies on a single day before the campaign ended, has claimed that this was the first time that votes were being asked in the past 70 years on the basis of development work done. Such claims by Delhi chief minister are excusable as Kejriwal is known for making tall claims without much ado and then also forget about them.

The political arena of this country in the second half of the post Mandal phase has been full of instances where development work has returned leaders to office. Some of the examples being Chandrababu Naidu, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and SM Krishna down South, Naveen Patnaik in the East and Nitish Kumar in neighbouring Bihar.

By Sidharth Mishra

Delhi is just a few days away from casting vote on February 8 to elect the new city government. As the campaign enters the last lap, three very visible points emerge: 1. Arvind Kejriwal overcame the rout the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) received in 2019 Lok Sabha to start off as favourite for the assembly polls. 2. Despite a late start, the BJP campaign has peaked matching the AAP seat-to-seat though there is absence of a charismatic face at Delhi level. 3. The Congress has frittered away the gains, in term of vote percentage, it made in 2017 municipal polls and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The BJP performs well in Delhi whenever there is a three-way division in the vote share in the national Capital as it has a static support base, is the general perception. With the Congress campaign failing to take off with a complete breakdown of the poll campaign machinery, the AAP stands to again as it happened in 2015, polls pundits are tending to believe.

By Sidharth Mishra

As the campaign for February 8 assembly polls in the national capital is peaking, the narratives dictating the political fight is having a roller coaster ride. At the beginning of the campaign, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed that this was the first poll in the electoral history of Delhi that votes were being asked for the development done in the past five years.

This claim was received on a derisive note by both the opponents, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Former chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit has released a flurry of videos claiming that it was her mother who should be credited for ‘developing’ Delhi and the voters rewarded her twice in 2003 and 2008 voting her back to power.

By Sidharth Mishra

With nomination process having been completed, the roadmap of the ensuing polls for Delhi assembly has been unveiled. If someone thought that the rivals BJP and even the Congress were in any mood to give a walkover to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the battle at its start point suggest differently.

In their selection of candidates, both the BJP and the Congress have reposed confidence in the ability of the soldier at the ground level, that’s the party candidate. On a close scanning of the list of the ticket allottees, it becomes quite evident that there aren’t any seats where the two older parties have fielded a reluctant person.

By Sidharth Mishra

Facing the wrath of anti-incumbency against the Congress government at the Centre, which was embroiled in several cases of corruption, in 2013 then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was looking for a panacea to overcome adversities and come to power for the fourth time in the row. The development agenda of Dikshit had brought her back to power in 2003 and 2008.

A visionary leader that she was, she planned an overhaul of the city during the Commonwealth Games 2010 and had believed that the fresh wave of development would see her getting another term from the people. However, her development drive was drowned in the cacophony let loose by the Anna Hazare movement, whose product is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

By Sidharth Mishra

For those planning a holiday during the winters in the scenic Andamans, the gateway for them would be through the Veer Savarkar airport. One of the must destinations in the island is Cellular Jail, where the freedom fighters were incarcerated after being transported for life by the colonial government.

A very well-researched light and sound show at the gaol complex, where Savarkar was jailed twice, tells the Savarkar story in detail. A nation which recognized him as a freedom fighter, issued a stamp in his memory and named an airport after him is suddenly debating his antecedents.

By Sidharth Mishra

Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has his hands full. As if the ongoing unrest in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was not enough, discontent has now boiled over on the Delhi University campus with the teachers laying a siege of the Vice Chancellor’s office.

In the present turmoil on the two campuses, there is one commonality, the utter failures of the two vice chancellors, Mamidala Jagdeesh Kumar of the JNU and Yogesh Tyagi of the Delhi University to encourage dialogue. In both the cases the charge against the establishment is of unilateral decision making without taking into account the views of the students and the teaching communities.

By Sidharth Mishra

With Delhi Police registering FIRS against the agitating students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the JNU administration moving the High Court for a contempt of the court case against the students and the cops, it’s difficult to comprehend if its beginning of the end of the crisis, or the end of the beginning which was made a day earlier with the government constituting a three-member committee to look into the matter.

JNU, its students and faculty have been discussed variously for the past week in public domain with the dominant narrative being that they are anti-national and a burden on society; and JNU is an ‘adda’ (hub) of politics which should be shut down. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank have, however, shown signs of some benevolence towards the agitating students but the same cannot be said about the more stringent elements wedded to their common ideology.