New Delhi: Soon after the Cabinet meeting over the L-G’s recommendation about the Delhi Assembly, a senior Union minister said that it had recommended dissolution of the Assembly with immediate effect.
While fresh polls is expected to be held early next year, the process for the November 25 byelections to three seats Mehrauli, Tughlakabad and Krishna Nagar for which the last date for nominations is Wednesday, will stand automatically cancelled.
The Delhi Assembly has been under suspended animation since February 2014. It is mandatory to hold fresh elections within six months of the dissolution of the Assembly.
Technically, the House needs to be dissolved by November 10, last date for withdrawal of nominations for the byelections. There are some indications that the Election Commission might notify fresh polls by mid-February, and till then President’s Rule will continue.
The major thrust of the the BJP, AAP and the Congress would be to ensure that each party on its own manages to get a clear-cut majority to form the government.
In the present Assembly, not a single party had an absolute majority, as a result of which the Congress-backed Aam Aadmi Party government could survive only for 49 days, after which the city was put under President’s Rule on February 17.
Congress not to project CM candidate in Delhi
The Delhi Congress is likely to suggest the name of former chief minister Sheila Dikshit as one of its key candidates for the fresh Assembly elections in the national capital. The local Congress unit is also reportedly in the process of recommending the names of some of its former MPs as the candidates for the Assembly polls.
The Congress, however, is not going to project any individual as its chief ministerial candidate. The decision on the selection of the leader of the party’s legislative chief would be left to the wisdom of the elected members.
While Ms Dikshit has gone on record saying she was not going to contest the Assembly poll, sources said a large section within the party was in favour of pitting her against AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal, who had defeated her by a margin of about 25,000 votes in the December election. The Congress, which had won three successive elections, was reduced to just eight seats in December poll.
The BJP too is preparing a strategy to ensure that the AAP is not able to spread its wings further in the fresh election. The AAP won 28 out of 70 seats in the last Assembly polls. “At that time, Muslims had not voted for the AAP.
But in the Lok Sabha polls, the majority of Muslims voted for the AAP,” a local BJP leader said. “We are keeping all these things in mind while planning our strategy.”
The Congress has attributed its humiliating defeat to the anti-incumbency factor. The party feels that it had miserably failed to project the development wo-rks which it had undertaken during the past 15 years.
A local Congress leader said that bringing Ms Dikshit back would help the party to aggressively highlight achievements of her 15-year rule.
