MCD election: Dropping incumbents part of strategy, says BJP leader monitoring polls

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday said it will present a ‘vision document’ for improving urban life to the voters during the MCD election campaign.

Party’s national vice president and Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe said, “We will try to emulate successful projects implemented in the 72 municipalities ruled by the BJP such as Pune, Indore, Lucknow, Bengaluru, and Jalandhar.

Sahasrabuddhe said dropping incumbents has been a “part and parcel of the BJP strategy for long” and has been followed in the past elections in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

“We look at these (municipal) elections with an innovative approach. We work with a perception to improve urban life. We have done a lot of good work in several municipalities where we are in power. We will bring those examples to fore and motivate our councillors to emulate them. It required structured efforts so we will expand the scope of our vision and thinking,” he said

He said the BJP campaign will highlight the Central government’s initiatives for the betterment of Delhi and the work by party councillors in the last five years. “The party will make the voters aware about the negativity spread by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). We will expose them by telling people about their politics of creating hurdles. People of Goa and Punjab have brought them down. We will finish the remaining task here,” Sahasrabuddhe said.

Party president Amit Shah had appointed Sahasrabuddhe with three central ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Jitendar Singh, and Sanjeev Balyan to monitor municipal elections in the national capital. This is the first time that the BJP has sent a team of senior leaders to manage civic polls in the city. Sitharaman has been given the charge of South Corporation and Singh will look after East. Balyan has been assigned north civic body.

Reacting to the unease among the sitting councillors over the issue of ticket distribution, he said their feelings are “justified and such decision would evoke different reactions”.

“They were little hurt and disheartened. Their feelings are being assuaged. Denial of an opportunity at a particular point of time does not mean end of the road. They are responding positively. Things are pretty normal,” he said.