Change is in the air in Congress-held Chandni Chowk

“Please wait until Modi finishes his speech,” replies a jeweller glued to the television set inside his showroom in the busy wholesale Chandni Chowk market when asked if he could spare sometime to talk on the upcoming Assembly elections.

A little distance away in the same lane, a fifth generation cloth merchant says he is desperate for a change and does not want either of the two grand old parties.

The densely populated Chandni Chowk area that covers four Assembly constituencies of Sadar Bazar, Ballimaran, Matia Mahal and Chandni Chowk hardly has any banners and posters of political parties in the fray for February 7 polls, no campaigns either.

But people are well aware whom they are going to vote this time around. You try to form an opinion based on the past traditions and there are chances you will be wrong.

There is Gali Parathewali inside in the narrow, squeezed lanes of Chandni Chowk where some shops are as old as 1872.

Generations have served parathas to visitors in this three-century old market. One of the shops has pictures of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi hanging on the wall.

That should be enough to gauge the mood of the shop owner. But make no mistake, he is all for Aam Aadmi Party and has reasons for not supporting Congress.

“Generations of my family has voted for the Congress but I will not. The 49-day government was better. At least there was no fear of police collecting money,” says Dinesh, who has grown up in this lane famous for selling parathas.

There are a number of galis (narrow lanes) in Chandni Chowk full of roadside eateries. The only expectation the eatery owners have from any government that comes is that they should not be asked to shut shops.

The Congress Party has won the Chandni Chowk seat for a good 16 years from 1998 to 2013 but hardly anybody is talking about the grand old party now.

Some, who want to vote for BJP, have been swearing by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name.

The Aam Aadmi Party has fielded Alka Lamba from Chandni Chowk  Lamba is a former Congress leader who joined AAP in 2013. But, Arvind Kejriwal remains the face of the party.