Delhi election 2020: PM Narendra Modi's party BJP is looking to unseat Arvind Kejriwal's AAP
Highlights
- PM Modi asks people to vote in the Delhi assembly election
- Vote in record numbers, he says
- BJP is looking to unseat Arvind Kejriwal's AAP this election
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted this morning asking people to come out in large numbers and vote in the Delhi assembly election. "Urging the people of Delhi, especially my young friends, to vote in record numbers," PM Modi tweeted.
PM Modi's party, the BJP, which won only three seats in the 70-member assembly in 2015, is looking to unseat Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the national capital. The BJP has run its campaign on the strength of PM Modi's policies.
Over 1.47 crore voters will face the choice of re-electing the AAP or replacing it with the BJP or the Congress. The polling marks the end of a bitter face-off that saw exceptionally coarse language and communally-charged attacks.
Tight security arrangements are in place across the national capital with extra vigil in south-east Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, where a protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is going on, and other sensitive areas.
The Congress, which ruled Delhi for 15 years before being decimated by the AAP, has led a relatively lacklustre campaign. The party's top leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have barely campaigned for its candidates.
In the 2015 assembly polls, the AAP had won 54.3 per cent of the vote, while the BJP got 32 per cent and the Congress managed just 9.6 per cent. While the AAP won 67 seats in 2015, since then the party has conceded one seat to the BJP in a bypoll and six of its lawmakers have been disqualified over joining other parties.