Delhi Polls: BJP's Nupur Sharma not giving up easily even as Arvind Kejriwal sounds upbeat

NEW DELHI: Arvind Kejriwal is busy strategising for his party in the two-room apartment cum office at Vallabhbhai Patel House in the heart of Delhi. The place is buzzing with activity as dozens of volunteers go about their business in one of the rooms already congested with furniture, campaign posters and cardboard cutouts.

Less than 3 km away, 30-year-old Nupur Sharma, pitted against the AAP leader in New Delhi constituency, is out in the field, visiting households and meeting voters. Sharma puts her arms around the women and tells them that “AAP is the Anti-Aurat Party”.

Accompanied by BJP’s CM candidate Kiran Bedi at a road show, Sharma claims “no woman is going to vote for them as they haven’t forgotten what AAP did at Khirki extension or what they said about Kiran Bedi. Also, Kejriwal has not even been campaigning here”.

Kejriwal hasn’t been able to campaign too vigorously in his constituency in the last few days, since he also needs to focus on the other 69 seats. However, Kejriwal had tried to do so before the elections were announced. “The party has been in campaign mode for the last six months. With the uncertainty prevailing last year, we always felt elections were round the corner,” said Gopal Mohan, Kejriwal’s campaign manager.

With BJP fielding an erudite young woman who is also a resident of the constituency, the battle for New Delhi seat has become one of the most interesting contests. While BJP is putting all its firepower behind Sharma, deploying Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan to monitor and execute her campaign, voters seem to be in a forgiving mood where Kejriwal is concerned.

They seem to have accepted his “sincere apology” and seem inclined to give him another chance. When he went back to the voters in June, after AAP’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections, that former wave of support was no longer there. Sure enough, Sharma makes sure to remind people about “unstable” Kejriwal. “He ran away from New Delhi. He ran away from Banaras. All he did was protest. But I am educated, young and started politics at the age of 23. I belong to this place. I know your problems,” she tells voters.

However, her campaign doesn’t seem to have really picked up. Her road shows have failed to attract crowds. “The crowd was not great so she started going to every household.

Her elections are just a start. A few years ago, when Nupur’s parents were moving to Noida, she refused to move from New Delhi constituency, just because she wanted to contest from this seat as a local. It is a longterm plan,” said one of her aides.

Kejriwal is confident that the healing is complete. “In the last six months I’ve met many people. That anger is not there anymore. People have told me that I have visited the constituency more than what Shiela Dikshit did in 15 years,” he told ET.

Sharma is not giving up easily. “I am definitely not a scapegoat, I am a practising lawyer. I have fought an election before. I am fighting to win,” she said. But the mood of the voters seems to have been made. “So what if he has not campaigned here? Last time when he came to power, no police dared to harass us. We need someone who understands our problems,” said Jarnail Singh, an auto driver in Gole market.