Delhi Polls: High Octane Campaigning To Conclude Today; AAP, Congress, BJP To Make Last-Minute Push

Delhi Assembly Elections: All the political parties in the fray, including the major ones, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, will make huge last-minute push for votes today.

Images: PTI

New Delhi: After a period marked by high-decibel sloganeering, controversial jibes and banters, the high-octane campaigning for the Delhi Assembly elections will conclude on Thursday evening by 5pm. All the political parties in the fray, including the major ones, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, will make huge last-minute push for votes today. The campaigning which was drummed up by the Aam Aadmi Party on the issue of development, gradually tilted towards the Citizenship Amendment Act and the NRC as Shaheen Bagh became the focal point of BJP’s campaigning. Delhi will go to polls on Saturday to elect a 70-member Assembly. Counting of votes will be taken up on Tuesday. On the penultimate day of campaigning which was on Wednesday, the AAP, the Congress and the BJP slugged it out over issues ranging from citizenship law, appeasement politics and unemployment. Also Watch: Ground report from Mukherjee Nagar War of words escalated between the BJP and the AAP which traded barbs over the Shaheen Bagh shooter. On Tuesday, police had said that Kapil Baisala, the man who opened fire at Shaheen Bagh protest site last week, was an AAP worker. Addressing a press conference, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that if Baisala was even remotely connected to his party then he should be given a "double punishment" Attacking Home Minister Amit Shah, Kejriwal said that sending police officers for a press conference exposed his "ill-intent". Meanwhile, a BJP delegation, headed by Union minister Prakash Javadekar, met the Election Commission seeking an FIR against AAP leaders, citing the firing by an alleged AAP worker near Shaheen Bagh protest here. Addressing a rally in Kondli in east Delhi, Shah said the polls were a contest between two ideologies and results will be a shocker to everyone. He said the AAP and the Congress opposed the BJP on issues like Citizenship Amendment Act, Ram temple in Ayodhya, abrogation of provisions of Article 370 due to fear of their "vote bank". Also watch: Rahul Gandhi also launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the PM does not want the youth to get employment as it works like oxygen for his politics. Gandhi said there was no need for the prime minister to give lessons on nationalism and he should explain why was he not able to provide employment to the youth. He said before Modi came to power in 2014, there was no Hindu-Muslim divide in the country from 2004-2014 but then "he comes from Gujarat and spreads poison". (additional inputs from PTI)