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INDIA-POLITICS
Hard-fought Delhi election set for Feb 8
NEW DELHI, Jan 6, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – New Delhi will hold elections next
month, officials said Monday, in a key popularity test for Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s party as it reels from nationwide protests over a new
citizenship law.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party swept to a second term last year in national
elections but the Indian capital has been governed since 2013 by the left-
wing grassroots Common Man Party (AAP).
Under pressure from a weak economy, the BJP has also fared badly in a
string of recent regional elections, most recently in Maharashtra, home to
Mumbai, and in Jharkhand in the east.
New legislation loosening citizenship rules for persecuted minorities, but
not if they are Muslim, has sparked almost a month of protests and violence
that has killed more than 25 people.
Islamic groups and critics at home and abroad charge that this forms part
of Modi’s aim to remould India as a Hindu nation and render its 200 million
Muslims second-class citizens, something he denies.
More than 14 million voters in the sprawling, polluted city state of New
Delhi will be eligible to cast ballots in the February 8 polls, with results
expected three days later, the election commission said.
The AAP, led by Arvind Kejriwal, a former tax inspector who has modelled
himself as a crusader for the underprivileged, won 67 out of 70 seats on
offer in Delhi’s last election in 2015.
In the run-up to the election Kejriwal, 51, has backed the protests and
doled out free bus rides for women and cheaper utilities, while promising
safe drinking water and a “shining Delhi”.
The once-dominant Congress party led by the Gandhi dynasty and which ruled
Delhi for 15 years until 2013 has been pushed on the sidelines and is likely
to struggle to make a comeback.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1855 hrs