The small Hanuman temple in Delhi’s Kusumpur Pahadi slum comes alive on Tuesday afternoons, when residents trickle into the temple courtyard along with members of a local non-profit organisation.
On January 28, the thin lanes leading to the temple were lined with dozens of blue jerrycans – a common sight across the slum.
With the Delhi elections just eight days away, the agenda that afternoon was: “choosing the right representative”. In attendance were nearly two dozen residents, almost all women. An NGO volunteer, Ashok Kumar, spoke about how the MLA fund must be used for development work and welfare schemes, like providing water connections to Kusumpur households.
“No politician does anything for us,” interrupted Savita, 50, who has lived in the slum for three decades. “Kejriwal should have given us water connections. What’s the point of voting for him?”
With 4,909 households, Kusumpur Pahadi is one of the biggest slums in Delhi, according to the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, or DUSIB. It falls in South Delhi’s Mehrauli Assembly constituency. Most of its residents are Muslims or Dalits from the Valmiki and Jatav communities. Dalits constitute about 16% of the capital’s population, according to the 2011 census, while 13% of Delhiites are Muslim.
Across three slums in Delhi, including in Seemapuri and Kalkaji, Scroll found a strong sense of dissatisfaction towards the AAP government.
The anger in Delhi’s poorest quarters is significant. A good chunk of the capital’s electorate lives in its slums. A decade ago, the AAP found its political feet in these very neighbourhoods.
Kejriwal worked as an RTI activist in slums like Sundar Nagari before the AAP was founded in 2012. This was also the site of the party’s initial campaigns against inflated electricity bills and Kejriwal’s hunger strikes against them.
In 2015 and 2020, about 70% of Valmikis and Jatavs voted for the Aam Aadmi Party, according to a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. At 83%, the Muslim community’s sway towards AAP was even stronger.
This election might throw up something different.
The Bharatiya Janata Party estimates that nearly seven lakh of the approximately 10 lakh voters in Delhi’s slums had voted for AAP in the 2015 and 2020 elections. The party aims to get five lakh of them to its side in 2025.
For the AAP, a worry is that poor Muslims seem to be orbiting out of the party’s social coalition, with many reconsidering their electoral choices.
Dalit voters Scroll spoke to were clearly unhappy with the state of civic amenities, though they might still hold on to the AAP for its welfare measures. Moreover, with many struggling with economic distress after two terms of the Narendra Modi government, the BJP, too, is up against a challenge.
The dissatisfaction
A decade of the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government in Delhi has left behind discontent in Kusumpur. The slum residents have two main anxieties: the perennial scarcity of drinking water and the looming fear of slum demolition.
Savita, who earns a livelihood as a domestic worker in the posh houses of Vasant Vihar, told Scroll that instead of installing water connections, the Kejriwal government sends dozens of water tankers every day to the slum. Residents queue up with jerrycans and lumber back home with dozens of litres of water. This has led to several complications.
“If the tankers arrive when I’m not home, my children can’t go to school because they have to collect the water,” she said. “Kejriwal says he has built good schools. But children here often don’t end up in classrooms. They stay back for water and pick up bad habits in the neighbourhood.”
Sometimes, jobless young men offer to carry the water for Rs 10 per can – an unpopular but often necessary expense.
Usha, 48, added that other welfare policies of the Delhi government come with problems too. “You can’t get medicines at their mohalla clinic,” she said. “The public toilets they have built here are extremely unhygienic.”
AAP’s half-solution to the water problem has created a network of shady middlemen. They hoard drinking water and sell it to the residents for Rs 50 per can. “This could be solved if we had water connections,” said Savita. “When we told our MLA about his promise, he said the government cannot give connections because we don’t own the land on which we’ve built our homes.”
In Kodi Colony slum in East Delhi’s Seemapuri constituency, voters constantly complained that the water supply was unhygienic. “Kejriwal has given us one thing – water from the gutters,” said Rakesh, 54. “The water in the taps smells awful; and the water outside stagnates in clogged drains and breeds mosquitoes.”
Local redressal of these problems is poor since AAP workers, once seen as selfless volunteers, are losing their sheen.
In Navjeevan Camp slum in Kalkaji constituency, Babita, 31, told Scroll that the party’s workers had become “nikamme” – useless – who used their positions to corner government benefits. In Kusumpur, Kanan, 34, a helper in a Vasant Vihar hotel, made the same claim.
“The roads here are in bad shape. Whenever authorities come to repair them, they only work on portions near the homes of AAP workers,” he said. “This used to happen in the Congress years.”
The Congress factor
But, surprisingly, the Congress is not only being remembered for the indifference of its workers.
“In Sheila Dikshit’s time, price rise was under control,” said Mohammad Aslam, 35, a textile factory worker in Navjeewan Camp. “These days, we struggle to even earn a meal. Congress also settled this slum so we could have homes.”
Aslam is a voter in Kalkaji constituency, where AAP’s incumbent and chief minister Atishi faces a triangular face-off against Alka Lamba of the Congress and Ramesh Bhiduri of the BJP.
After a decade of poor performances, the Congress seems to be making a comeback in this constituency. “Jidhar jao udhar Congress ki charcha hai,” said Aslam.
The party’s appeal is largely among Muslims, but even Hindus are mulling over the party’s programme.
Babita, a Valmiki, said she might vote for Lamba for the same reasons.
What is potentially pushing Muslims towards Congress is the growing view that Kejriwal is soft on Hindutva. In Seemapuri, Hasan Alam, 55, an e-rickshaw driver, pointed out that in March 2024, when Muslims in Inderlok were assaulted by the police while praying, Kejriwal stayed silent, while Congress leaders spoke up against the violence.
“AAP and BJP are two sides of the same coin,” said Alam. “Whenever BJP leaders say something insulting about Muslims, Kejriwal doesn’t come to our defense. What’s the point of having such a leader?”
In Navjeewan Camp, most Congress workers were once associated with AAP. One of them is 35-year-old Mohammad Murtaza. “Atishiji has a poor connection to the ground and most AAP workers are wary of her,” he said. “Her style of working has upset functionaries who had aspirations.” According to him, Lamba is a better pick. “She has enthused the party workers with her campaign. The local Congress leaders were once seen as goons. She has changed that image.”
Murtaza is unsure whether this will be enough for Lamba to win Kalkaji. “But after years, it feels like the Congress is visible again,” he said. “We are back in the game.”
In several constituencies across the capital, AAP faces a bigger challenge from the Congress, which threatens to undercut its vote share. In Kalkaji, for instance, Atishi won by 11,000 votes in 2020 – a margin that Lamba can jeopardise.
In Seemapuri, AAP’s margin in 2020 was more than 56,000, but its MLA, Rajendra Pal Gautam, a popular Dalit leader, quit the party last year alleging that it was ignoring Dalit interests. He later joined the Congress.
“The good thing about Muslims voting for Congress is that it will make the BJP’s chances better,” said a gleeful Satya Narain Dubey, 75, in Seemapuri. He identifies as a BJP voter.
What keeps AAP afloat
In Delhi’s slums, we heard a common refrain: “We will vote; but we know that whoever wins will not work for us”.
This is the disillusionment of the poor who have become poorer over the last decade. Like the men in Navjeewan Camp who said that they once found work at least 15 days in a month, a number that has halved now. Or Alam, who had to close his denim factory in Seelampur after demonetisation to drive an e-rickshaw. Or Babita, who, like her neighbours, struggles to find work in homes in affluent neighbourhoods because of a cost-cutting middle class.
Despite their discontent, many Dalit voters in Delhi’s slums still seem to be on Kejriwal’s side. So what if his government did not provide water connections, they argue, at least they sent the water tankers. “Mohalla clinics might be expensive, but at least he built the clinics,” said Usha, 48, in Kusumpur. “The public toilets might be dirty, but at least he built the toilets.”
The unpopularity of AAP workers is offset by Kejriwal’s image of a “clean leader” who will protect the poor. “If we vote for BJP, they will demolish our slums. That’s all they know,” said Kanan. “Kejriwal will never do that. We feel safe under him.”
The BJP seems to be an option only among its loyal voters.
The five lakh new voters that it wants from Delhi’s slums are hard to find, since many complain that price rise under the central government has shrunken their livelihoods. “There is a lot of misery under Modi and we struggle to afford the basics,” said Pooja Kumari, 55, in Seemapuri. “But at least Kejriwal has relieved some of it. When I went to a government hospital after a stomach infection last year, the doctor promptly did tests on me and it did not cost me a lot of money.”
Ashok Kumar, the NGO worker we met in Kusumpur Pahadi, told Scroll he worked with voters in a dozen slums across Delhi and this is the prevailing sentiment. “The thinking is that when the election is between three goons, we vote for the noblest out of them,” he said. “Kejriwal is that noble goon.”
In Kalkaji’s Navjeewan Camp, a 55-year-old believes that many of those who are vocal about voting for the BJP would eventually vote for AAP. “Ramesh Bhiduri moves around with goons,” he said, requesting anonymity for the same reason. “Those who shout that they’ll vote for the lotus are doing it because they fear that his men will harass them if they are honest. The undercurrent is actually for the AAP. But their margin will become thinner.”
All photographs by Ayush Tiwari.
