Delhi goes to local polls with a Trifurcated Local Body structure for the first time. It is ironical that Delhi that is the seat for all 3 layers of Government has had a sorry track record on local governance. While news of horrific crimes against against women routinely make the headlines shaming us, the past many years have seen continuous tension between the state government and the local government on a host of issues from how traffic must be managed to how the local body must be structured. More than statehood perhaps Delhi needed a directly elected Mayor and a local government with the maximum devolution of power as the single point of accountability to its people. Instead it has three dysfunctional ayers of governance with a Mayor to manage the City, a Chief Minister to lord over its mega infrastructure and a Union Home Minister to police its roads.
It is anybody’s guess at this time if the trifurcated local body structure will do much to fix this multi-layer governance structure but it is funny how politicized the elections to these local bodies have gotten with Delhi Chief Minister and Congress leader Sheila Dixit dragging Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP leader Narendra Modi into it.
The local politics in Delhi have always had a huge symbolic significance. The BJP’s clout in Delhi once reflected its broader appeal to the Urban Middle Class. Successive elections at the Lok Sabha and the state level have however seen the BJP gradually decline with the Congress establishing absolute lock on Delhi’s Lok Sabha seats while beating incumbency in the Vidhan Sabha polls. The Municipal polls were the only remaining bastion for the BJP that managed to keep its hold on local governance while coming up with another Vision document this time around.
It is curious that Sheila Dixit should raise the Narendra Modi in a local election in Delhi. Whether it does the BJP any good in the local poll is an open question, but it does confirm that Congress Leaders are Narendra Modi’s best Brand Ambassadors. With their belligerent rhetoric and tendency to draw Mr. Modi into remote election campaigns they are turning these elections into a referendum on Mr. Modi without the need for him to even step out of Gujarat and campaign.
It is perhaps desperation on the Congress’ part for a lock on the Muslim vote that Sheila Dixit had to suffer a “Maut ka Saudagar” moment. The casualty here clearly is the real issue of how Delhi’s roads and communities must be governed.
Filed under: Delhi Polls 2008, Narendra Modi, Offstumped
