Baijayant Panda, the BJP’s national vice president, spoke to The Hindu about the party’s promises to Delhi’s voters and addressed questions about the ‘revri’ [freebie] culture and the decision to not declare a chief ministerial face for the February 5 Assembly election
Why has the BJP not been able to win Delhi for the past 27 years?
During the period that you are speaking about, the BJP has been growing in Delhi. We haven’t formed the government due to the nature of the political alignments here. But our vote share has grown consistently. In the last civic poll, we had 40% vote share and AAP had around 42%.
Are you concerned about the trend of Delhi voting for one party in the Lok Sabha election and another in the Assembly poll?
Well, I am from Odisha. This is exactly what used to happen there. For 24 years, a regional party [Biju Janata Dal] was in the State. We experienced a similar phenomenon in 2014 and 2019, but in 2024, we bridged this gap. We’ll do the same in Delhi.
What is the BJP’s core message to people in this election?
Our Sankalp Patra [manifesto] released by Union Home Minister Amit Shah has 250 promises, including income support for women through direct benefit transfer schemes, which we promised and delivered in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra. AAP had promised the same in Punjab, but it failed to deliver. We have made many commitments that are backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s guarantee, in which people have a lot of faith. Providing free education from ‘KG to PG’, acquiring 13,000 e-buses, and investing ₹10,000 crore to build a high-tech city — all these are our commitments to the people of Delhi.
Some argue that the BJP should have projected a chief ministerial face for Delhi.
This is a narrative that AAP has tried to build. They have no answers to the same question because their leader [AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal] cannot be their CM face as he got bail [from the Supreme Court in connection with the excise policy case] under stringent conditions. Thus, it is AAP that has this issue.
The BJP has been critical of the ‘revri’ culture, yet the party’s manifesto is said to have mirrored the ‘revris’ offered by AAP. What changed?
There has been no change. We have implemented welfare schemes without leakage, discrimination or corruption, whereas AAP has run the Capital to the ground. Its top leadership has been to jail. It committed the classroom scam, the Mohalla Clinic scam, where fake medicines were provided, causing the deaths of children. And scams in the Delhi Jal Board and the Delhi Transport Corporation. AAP’s narrative that we are copying its schemes is not true.
There is a view that for your party to do well, the Congress needs to revive. How do you look at the Congress’s chances?
The Congress is a pale shadow of what it once was. It’s fighting for survival now. In the 2024 general election in Delhi, it allied with the AAP. We still defeated their alliance comprehensively. What the Congress does is up to its leaders, our target is to win.
Do you see a national footprint of this election?
Delhi, being the national capital, gets a lot of attention due to the presence of national and international media. But they’re not the ones who will vote. The ballots will be cast by middle-class voters, gig workers, auto drivers, and those living in slums, all of who are fed up with AAP.
Published – January 30, 2025 01:19 am IST