The fate of a meagre 70 assembly seats for which there were 699 candidates in the fray was decided in Delhi’s elections yesterday. The numbers, though, belie Delhi’s disproportionate imprint on national politics. This explains the energy that has been expended by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party, the challenger and the incumbent, respectively, to capture Delhi’s throne. The AAP’s cakewalks in 2015 and 2020 — the party had won over 50% of the vote share on both occasions — are, the pundits say, unlikely to be repeated on this occasion. Anti-incumbency, quite naturally, has taken the shine off some of the AAP’s novel initiatives. The incarceration of the party’s top leadership — Arvind Kejriwal and his top lieutenants are out on bail — its opponents will be hoping, would also deal a body blow to the AAP’s claim of being a party free of corruption. The direction in which the AAP’s core support base — Delhi’s poor and the working class — tilts would decide its fate. The BJP, which has not tasted power in Delhi for a while, seems to have tweaked its canvassing strategy. Its signature polarising rhetoric has played second fiddle to diverse promises of welfare. An honorarium for women, paid internship for the youth, a monthly pension for small traders — were such sops not dismissed as rewdis once? — among other programmes, the BJP is hoping, will turn the tide in its favour. In this, the BJP seems to have taken a leaf out of the AAP’s playbook. The Congress, the third horse in the race, has run a campaign that has been energetic only in spurts.

The winner must prioritise Delhi’s civic renewal upon coming to power. But environmental issues — the poison in the air, the Yamuna’s precipitous decline, the encroachment of the Ridge and so on — must command a share of the attention that is likely to be bestowed upon infrastructure and civic services. But what would be of particular interest are the political fall-outs of the polls. Would an AAP victory bring much-needed momentum to the Opposition alliance, or what is left of it? How would the equation of the Congress, the AAP’s adversary in Delhi, be with Mr Kejriwal’s party nationally if the AAP returns to power? A win for the BJP on the other hand would extend its bullish electoral run since the Lok Sabha elections. Its renewed electoral dominance would also lend a fillip to its ideological projects, contentious and otherwise.