Congress candidate from Kalkaji seat Alka Lamba says AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, too, insulted women.
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

Congress leader Alka Lamba has seen Delhi politics closely as a young student who won the Delhi University Students’ Union presidential poll in 1995 and as a seasoned leader who was elected the Chandni Chowk MLA twenty years later. If there is one thing about the city’s electoral politics that has remained the same in the past 30 years, it is misogyny, she says.

“When I was in college, catcalling and harassment were common. Even as an MLA, when I was on the streets, it was normal. I’ve seen women being harassed here since I was 18-19 years old,” says Ms. Lamba, who heads All India Mahila Congress, the party’s women’s wing.

She is fighting the February 5 Delhi Assembly election from Kalkaji against Delhi Chief Minister Atishi and BJP’s former MP Ramesh Bidhuri, who has faced flak for derogatory comments about women leaders.

Ms. Lamba said her BJP rival has made comments that have “spoilt the atmosphere” but held Mr. Kejriwal equally culpable of “disrespecting women” by portraying Ms. Atishi as a “stopgap CM”.

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“By making Atishi a temporary CM and portraying that she’s weaker than him, Kejriwal has also disrespected women,” said the former MLA.

She also accused the AAP, which she joined for five years, of straying from its goal of ridding the city of “corruption and pollution” to its “present state, where it is playing politics of religion by announcing honorarium for pujaris and gurdwara granthis but not giving imams their due”.

Cong. to AAP and back

This is not the first time Ms. Lamba is contesting a political heavyweight. In 2003, eight years after becoming the DUSU president as a candidate of the Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India, she fought Madan Lal Khurana, who had served as a CM of Delhi, from Moti Nagar, albeit unsuccessfully.

In 2014, she switched to AAP and won Chandni Chowk seat a year later. In 2019, she returned to the grand old party. Ms. Lamba fought the 2020 Assembly poll from the same seat but lost to the AAP candidate, Parlad Singh Sawhney (whom AAP has replaced with his son this time).

Development know-how

Ms. Lamba plans to bring to Kalkaji her learnings from the old Delhi constituency, where she spearheaded the ₹90 crore Chandni Chowk redevelopment project, through which the 1.3-km stretch between Red Fort and Fatehpuri Masjid was decongested.

“I worked with people from every section — from street vendors to market associations. It took me three years to convince everyone. When the project was showcased as a tableau during the 2021 Republic Day parade, it filled me with pride,” she says.

To her, Chandni Chowk and Kalkaji are not very different. “Delhi is a small city. Kalkaji has the same issues as Chandni Chowk or New Delhi. My fight with Atishi is over development. In Kalkaji, even today, there is dust everywhere and overhead wires, besides the poisonous air,” says Ms. Lamba

She feels that Delhi saw its “better days” during the tenure of Sheila Dikshit as the CM.

“AAP claims it put together all the infrastructure we see in the city today. But when Shielaji was in power, was Delhi barren? Were there no roads, schools, IIT or AIIMS at the time?” adds Ms. Lamba.

She hopes Delhi’s voters will rally behind the Congress, which has not won a single seat in the past two Assembly polls, this time. “Delhiites are intelligent enough to see what we have done. I am confident that they want a change.”