Delhi Polls 2015: Amit Shah, Arun Jaitley take direct control of campaign as opinion poll shows AAP gaining ground

Delhi has 11,763 polling booths. For every booth the party has appointed 6-7 panna (page) pramukhs. Voter rolls for each booth runs into several pages. Each "page" has the name of at least 60 households. "Each panna pramukh has to visit each of the voters at least four times before polling day to ensure that none of our voters finds an excuse not to vote," said another leader closely involved with the Shah-led campaign.

There’s also micromanaging of communities – assigning leaders who can influence large community blocs in the city. Leaders like Kishan Pal Gujjar (for the Gujjar community) and Sanjeev Balyan (in outer Delhi constituency dominated by Jats) have been deployed.

Another BJP senior leader said some influential leaders from the ‘Poorvanchali’ community (a largely Bhojpuri community that migrated from parts of UP and Bihar) have joined BJP. The Poorvanchali vote is key in areas like East Delhi. Finance Minister Jaitley, busy with a budget that’s just over four weeks away and one that many are anticipating or hoping will be a game changer for the economy, is nonetheless spending time on Delhi elections.

"Jaitleyji will be spending up to two hours at least for the Delhi poll battle… he has in-depth knowledge of every constituency and is a key planner for our campaign," a senior leader quoted earlier in this story said.

Other leaders said that while Jaitley’s involvement in a Delhi election is not new, the fact that even his budget duties have not come in the way of election work shows how BJP’s top leadership is going all out to win in Delhi.

Are BJP leaders nervous? Is the total control of a state campaign by the top central leadership a sign that the party fears the AAP challenge is stronger than it thought? Jaitley denied this emphatically and said, "Every time there are polls in Delhi, I devote some time to it, I know every constituency of the city well."

Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, given charge of Greater Kailash constituency, also denied that nervousness had anything to do with the special assignment of duties. "People saying this perhaps do not know that this is the way the party handles elections, we all have a role to play," she said.

The total takeover of Delhi polls by Shah, Jaitley and handpicked teams have made the state unit’s disconnect even more glaring. Senior BJP leaders involved with the campaign say the best illustrative example is Delhi local unit chief Satish Upadhyaya saying US president Barack Obama’s visit had nothing to do with Delhi polls – this, at a time when posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Obama, with the slogan ‘badhai duniya main desh ki shaan, chalo chalein Modi ke saath’, had come up all over Delhi.

"If BJP wins Delhi, it will be because of central leaders…local leaders are irrelevant," a senior BJP leader said.