Drawing room baithaks, ‘pledges’: How BJP is drumming up support in Muslim neighbourhoods, riot-hit areas, in run-up to Delhi polls

“We have been conducting drawing room baithaks in Muslim-majority areas as well as Assembly seats where Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs are unpopular. The emphasis is on communicating the achievements of the Modi government at the Centre in general and the positive impact of women-centric schemes already in place specifically — including the new ones proposed for Delhi — on families like theirs,” said Anish Abbasi, president, Delhi BJP Minority Morcha.

In addition to continuity in welfare schemes and subsidies currently in place in the city, the BJP has announced the Mahila Samridhi Yojana under which Rs 2,500 will be disbursed to women beneficiaries every month, a subsidy of LPG cylinders, six nutrition kits and Rs 21,000 for pregnant women among its new schemes.

Abbasi said around 800 drawing room meetings, focussed especially on female voters, and comparatively larger nukkad or corner meetings with male voters at their core, had been conducted over the last three months. The party had, in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, relied on a similar approach to attempt to woo Muslim voters with the Centre’s developmental schemes.

Currently, Abbasi said, voters are faced with the “pathetic condition” of roads in their area, the quality of water being supplied, and the “pitiful state that they are being forced to live in by AAP MLAs” in constituencies such as Mustafabad, Babarpur, Ballimaran and Matia Mahal.

“Towards the end, we administer a pledge to those attending such meetings to vote for the BJP by acknowledging the party’s efforts of making their lives better. We have planned at least a hundred more such meetings all over Delhi till polling day,” Abbasi added.

Both the AAP and the BJP recorded a higher vote share in Northeast Delhi constituencies between the 2015 and 2020 Assembly elections.  While the AAP’s vote share in Mustafabad went from 30.13% in 2015 to 53.2% in 2020, the BJP’s was recorded to have risen from 35.33% to 42.06%.

In Seelampur, the AAP’s vote share rose from 51.26% in 2015 to 56.05% while the BJP’s increased from 26.31% to 27.58%.

In Babarpur, the AAP’s vote share recorded a slight increase – from 59.14% to 59.39% while the BJP’s went from 31.76% to 36.23%.