New Delhi: The upcoming byelections in the Rajouri Garden Assembly seat is in all probability going to suggest the way Delhiites are going to vote for the crucial April 22 municipal elections across 272 wards in the national capital. The Assembly seat, which fell vacant after AAP legislator Jarnail Singh resigned in January to take on former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal in his Lambi constituency, is set to witness a tough triangular contest between the Congress, the BJP-Akali Dal combine and the Congress on April 9.
Political pundits are of the view that the bypoll results on April 13 will give a clear sense on how the electorate is going to vote in the upcoming civic polls as the Assembly constituency is a mix of unauthorised colonies in Vishnu Garden, a resettlement colony in Raghubir Nagar, an urban village in Khayala, the middleclass Tagore Garden and the upscale Rajouri Garden. The bypoll results are crucial not only for the AAP, which will be a reflection on the party’s two-year governance in Delhi, but also critical for the saffron party after its landslide victory in UP and Uttarakhand. Also, the bypoll results are crucial for the Congress, which had faced a humiliating defeat by not opening an in the last Assembly polls even after ruling the city for 15 consecutive years.
The bypoll result will also make it clear whether the Congress is able to make a come back by opening its account in the 70 member Assembly. The Congress had lost this crucial Assembly seat only twice — first to Shiromani Akaki Dal’s Manjinder Singh Sirsa in 2013 and later to AAP’s Jarnail Singh in 2015. The seat was won by impressive margin by Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken in 1993, 1998 and 2003 Assembly polls. The party was able to retain this seat again in 2004 byelections and 2008 Assembly polls. But in 2008, Congress candidate Dayanand Chandila managed to wrest control over this seat by a margin of less than 100 votes against the SAD(M) candidate Avtar Sinbgh Hit.
This time, without taking any chance, the Con-gress has already decided to field Khayala councillor Meenakshi Chandela in the crucial bypolls. While Ms Chandela is a two-time councillor of Khayala, her husband Me-graj also represents Vis-hnu Garden for the seco-nd term. Both these wards come under the Rajouri Garden Assembly. Ms Meenakshi Chandelia is also daughter-in-law of Mr Dayanand, who had won both the Assembly and civic polls.
While the AAP’s Politi-cal Affairs Committee has named Harjeet Singh as the party’s candidate for Rajouri Garden, there is no consensus between the BJP and the Akali’s on whether they will put up a united front against the Congress and AAP or contest separately. There is a strong feeling in the local BJP leadership that if the saffron party fields its own candidate, it was bound to get the benefit of the ongoing Modi wave.
The AAP on its part has fielded a Delhi-born candidate who is also a successful businessman.
