At Sunita Kejriwal’s maiden roadshow in Capital, chorus of support for Delhi CM — and some naysayers

This may have been her second public appearance in Delhi after the INDIA bloc rally in Ramlila Maidan in March, but Sunita is already a household name among people in Kalyanpuri, Trilokpuri and Khichdipur. Over the past three weeks, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has given a clear message to people that the CM will reach out to them through her.

Calling herself ‘Bharat ma ki beti’ during her speech, Sunita urged people to save the country from dictatorship. “I know you all miss Arvind Kejriwal. They have said they will keep him in jail… they are not even giving him insulin, which he used to take every day. Do they want to kill him? What is he being punished for? For building schools, mohalla clinics, for giving women Rs 1,000 per month and for taking the elderly on pilgrimage? No one will forget him; no one will forget what he has done for them. Koi unhe tod nai sakta (no one can break him),” she said.

AAP has fielded sitting Kondli MLA Kuldeep Kumar from the East Delhi constituency, who was also part of the roadshow. He goes up against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Harsh Malhotra. The BJP did not repeat its incumbent MP Gautam Gambhir this time. Kumar, who belongs to the Scheduled Caste community, is contesting from an unreserved seat. He is popular in the unauthorised colonies and JJ clusters that abound in this part of the constituency, which also includes Patparganj, Shahdara and Gandhi Nagar.

Sunita’s roadshow passed through areas that fall under the Trilokpuri and Kondli assembly constituencies, which have been dominated by AAP since it first contested elections in 2013. In 2015 and 2020, the party got over 50% of the vote share in these areas. Even though Sunita was the one on the ground, Kejriwal’s name dominated conversations.

Not all were supportive of Sunita joining the campaign, though. For 20-year-old Rohit Kumar, who works in a private bank, it was a sign of pariwarwaad (nepotism). “AAP has several big leaders. There was no need for her to campaign. It looks like Kejriwal is promoting his family members. AAP has done a lot of good work. It doesn’t need to do these things. The candidate should have campaigned alone,” he said.

A few metres ahead, six Congressmen with their party flag in hand raised slogans in support of AAP. The two parties are part of the INDIA bloc and have joined hands to fight the election in Delhi. “Kejriwal’s arrest is a sign of the murder of democracy… The public knows that Modi ji is a liar, none of the promises he made have been kept,” said Satbir Khati, Congress block in-charge, adding that the party leadership has told workers to support the AAP campaign in the area.
But even in an AAP stronghold, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had admirers. Mamta Chauhan, 28, who works in a beauty parlour in Kalyanpuri, said Kejriwal had improved schools in the area, but Modi was equally popular. “The only thing that Kejriwal has done is improve schools. No other party did anything either but we like Modi ji. The problem is that BJP leaders in the area are rude and inaccessible. We have never seen our MP here, nor is it possible for us to approach him. Kuldeep Kumar is a local leader. We can go to him with any problem and we know we will get a patient hearing,” Chauhan said.

For Dharmendra (38), however, there is no doubt that Kejriwal was involved in the “liquor scam”: “These people don’t remember, he gave one bottle of liquor free with each one you bought. This was the scam. There has been no development in the area. I pulled my children out of a private school and enrolled them in a MCD school but they don’t teach them anything. Both my children go to private tuition classes.”

Madhu Sood, 26, a housewife who lives in Khichdipur, came across the roadshow on her way to the market. “I did not come here to see the roadshow but I support Kejriwal. He has improved schools, we get water on time now, and the mohalla clinic near our house is very good. But the biggest thing he has done for women is allow us to travel on buses for free. It has given us freedom… BJP has been saying that if they lose, Congress will take away our mangalsutra. The Congress has been wiped away from here a long time ago. If anyone will take away our mangalsutra, it will be BJP,” she said.

The BJP, meanwhile, said the absence of senior Delhi Congress leaders such as state unit chief Arvinder Lovely, former East Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit, and former Delhi Congress president Anil Chaudhary, showed that both parties were together only on paper. “They maintained their distance from Sunita Kejriwal’s roadshow. All these leaders are active in Delhi politics but did not turn up to support her,” said Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Sankar Kapoor.

(Himanshu Harsh is an intern with The Indian Express)