Delhi elections 2015: Sadar Bazar may see a triangular contest

NEW DELHI: A Congress stronghold till 2013, Sadar Bazar elected an AAP representative in the last assembly election. Som Dutt had managed to upstage both BJP and Congress by a slim margin. In fact, Congress was relegated to the distant third position. This time the party has fielded former Union minister Ajay Maken in a bid to win back the lost bastion.

Sadar Bazar was once dominated by traders who had been supporting BJP till 1998. But when they started moving out, Muslims and migrant workers threw their weight behind Congress. Rajesh Jain became MLA for three consecutive terms till AAP's Som Dutt dethroned him in 2013.

"AAP is popular among youths and Muslims. Dutt is quite visible in the constituency and he seems to have been preparing for the elections for a long time. Still, this seat remains a challenge for all the three parties as the vote share gap between them was very slim in the last election," said Rajesh Goel, a from Sadar Bazar.

By fielding Maken, who is Congress' campaign in-charge, from this seat, the party has ensured a tough contest. "Although the party's popularity is on a decline across constituencies, Maken's entry indicates that this is no longer a fight between AAP and BJP. It is a triangular contest," said Pankaj Khanna, a resident of Pratap Nagar.

Besides migration, the 2008 delimitation has changed the voter profile of the constituency that had helped Congress. Although the area lacks basics like roads, sewerage and water supply, Jain had won the previous polls with huge margins. Even traffic snarls and waterlogging have proved a nightmare for the voters.

In 2013, AAP's vote share (31.24%) was marginally higher than BJP's 30.51%. "BJP's promise of development has helped it increase its vote share. It remains to be seen if BJP can further consolidate its vote bank as not much development has taken place in this area from which BJP candidates won the municipality elections," said J P Rajput, a trader of Azad Market.