Cong got Muslim votes, BJP may have me killed: Kejriwal

Hinting that AAP may not do well in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, party supremo and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has said that Muslims have voted en bloc to Congress at the last minute even as he accused BJP of getting him assassinated by his own guard.

Kejriwal shared this assessment with a newspaper on Friday during his campaign in Punjab where AAP is fighting all the seats while he made the sensational allegation of his Indira Gandhi-style assassination to a news channel on Saturday.

"Until 48 hours before polling, it seemed like all seven seats will come to AAP. But at the last moment, the complete Muslim vote got shifted to Congress. We are trying to figure out what happened," he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Asked for her comments on Muslims voting pattern, Delhi Congress chief and former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said, "don't know what is he trying to say. Everyone has a right to vote whichever party he or she wants to vote. People of Delhi did not understand nor liked his governance model."

Akshay Marathe, an AAP media panellist who was involved in East Delhi candidate Atishi's campaign, defended Kejriwal's statement saying he was merely making an observation and there was no blaming of any community.

"On three seats, Muslims have a decisive vote, so secular parties hope to get their votes. When that doesn't happen, obviously internal calculations go awry. Arvind Kejriwal has merely made an observation about which way the Muslim vote went. How does that amount to blaming?" he tweeted.

While talking to a news channel in Punjab during his campaign, he also expressed fear that BJP would get him “murdered by my own PSO (Personal Security Officer) one day like Indira Gandhi”.

“My own security officers report to BJP...The BJP is after my life, they will murder me one day," Kejriwal claimed. He later tweeted, "Why BJP wants me to kill me? What is my fault? I am constructing schools and hospitals for people. For the first time, positive politics has started in the country. BJP wants to end it. But till the last breath, I will continue to work for the country."

These statements were interpreted in political circles as Kejriwal preparing the defence of his party's anticipated poor performance. With Delhi Assembly elections scheduled early next year, AAP feels that a bad performance would impact its chances.

During the campaign in Delhi, anti-BJP voters from Muslim and Dalit communities, which had moved from Congress to AAP, had said that they would decide on their choice towards the polling day as they wanted to gauge who could win against BJP. Both Congress and AAP fought for these votes but there were indications that Muslims were moving towards Congress.

AAP and Congress were locked in intense negotiations till the last minute before the last day of filing nominations to enter into an alliance but it could not materialise as the latter was not keen on extending the coalition to Haryana and Chandigarh.

Kejriwal had then said that an alliance in Delhi can happen only if Congress was ready to spare seats in Haryana and Chandigarh, triggering a war of words on who was responsible for the breakup.

Both the parties had agreed that a triangular fight in Delhi would result in division of anti-BJP votes and benefit for the saffron party, which was aiming to retain all the seven seats it won in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.