North-East lok Sabha seat, the most under developed area of Delhi, witnessed an interesting battle between the sitting Congress MP JP Agarwal, Prof Anand Kumar of the AAP and Manoj Tiwari of the BJP. The iconic Bhojpuri actor appears to have sealed the seat with voters pitching for Narendra Modi. It really did not matter to them who the BJP candidate was. The myriad issues before the voters, the non-availability of the Congress MP and inflation had turned people against the ruling party and the harvest of votes appeared to have gone into the basket of the BJP. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is in the fray but the cavalier functioning of the Arvind Kejriwal Government has gone against the nascent party. It lost much of its support base to the BJP after the voters of the lower strata of society felt cheated by the sudden resignation of the AAP-led Government.
The constituency saw a drastic shift in the minority votes, especially those from the Muslim community. The dedicated voters, who had always voted for the Congress, had now chosen AAP candidate as their choice. The reason behind the shift as claimed by the residents was the indifference shown by Agarwal towards the Muslims in the area, especially in Timarpur, Karawal Nagar and Seelampur. “We do not care about the development of roads or the infrastructure but are bothered about our survival each day and the Congress leader has not cared a hoot for us. The AAP has touched our hearts and we all will vote for him. Arvind Kejriwal is our messiah,” said Rashid Ansari, a resident of Seelampur. Even the youths residing in the area were impressed with Kejriwal and claimed that they needed to elect a party with homespun ideals. Earlier it was said that the traditional votes of Congress which shifted to AAP during Assembly polls have returned to the Congress but this was proven wrong as the minorities still favoured Kejriwal.
The middle class occupied areas such as Seemapuri and Dilshad Garden which were charged with support for Narendra Modi looked determined to see him as Prime Minister. The residents claimed that the term Modi was synonymous with change and development.