Delhi Elections 2020: Campaign ends; Over to voters on February 8

One of the most “divisive” campaigns for the Delhi Assembly elections ended on Thursday evening with voters now left with time between two nights to decide on whether to give AAP another shot at power or bring BJP back to power after a gap of 22 years.

Congress, which steered Delhi for uninterrupted 15 years till 2013, appears to be a distant third in the race with a section refusing to call the electoral battle in the capital a three-cornered fight.

The campaign ended at 6 PM with candidates and workers of AAP, BJP and Congress criss-crossing the 70 constituencies, making their last contact with voters before entering into the silent campaign mode.

At least three opinion polls have predicted AAP a clear mandate in the February 8 polls when over 1.47 crore voters queue up at the polling stations across the capital.

AAP is seeking the mandate for the third term, the first being a 49-day government in 2013, and have extensively campaigned on the work it done in the past five years, including in power, water, health and education sectors while Congress has been seeking to revive the “golden era” of Sheila Dikshit's 15-year rule before the party was overthrown by the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.

BJP had been banking on a high-pitched campaign based on 'polarisation', seeking to corner both AAP and Congress on the protests against Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), especially the one in Shaheen Bagh.

Its Union Minister Anurag Thakur and West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma were removed from the list of party's star campaigners by the Election Commission for their controversial remarks besides banning them from campaigning for 72 and 96 hours respectively. Verma was slapped a second campaign ban for 24 hours from Wednesday evening while its candidate Kapil Mishra faced a 48-hour campaign.

As the campaign ended, Kejriwal once again threw the challenge on BJP asking who was its Chief Ministerial candidate and said that no one in the party was worthy of becoming Chief Minister of Delhi.

Giving the final push to the campaign, Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari did road shows in West Delhi, exuding confidence that a party-led government will come to power.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said Congress may spring a surprise in Delhi like it did in the elections in neighbouring Haryana last year where opinion polls predicted that would win very few seats but ended up with 31 out of 90 seats.