As Delhi gears to go to elections on February 5, all three major political parties AAP, BJP and the Congress are active on the campaign front, leaving no stone unturned to ensure victory. However, it is the selection of candidates that will play a major role in determining who wins each segment. All political parties have considered caste equations while fielding candidates.
Here is a look at how the caste equation works in Delhi.
As per the figures, the state voter base is dominated by the upper castes. About 35 to 40 per cent of voters in the state belong to the general category, with Brahmins at 13 per cent. The Rajput comprise eight per cent of the total voter base while Vaishyas and Katri castes form seven and five per cent, respectively.
The second largest vote share comes from OBC at 30 per cent. Almost half the OBC population are Jat and Gurjar castes. Sixteen per cent of the total population are Dalits while 13 per cent are Muslims. Only 3.5 per cent of Delhi voters are Sikhs.
Candidates
When it comes to candidates, most political parties have taken care to field upper-caste candidates considering their dominance in the voter base. While 45 per cent of the candidates fielded by BJP and its allies are upper caste, 48 per cent of the total candidates fielded by AAP are general category. As for Congress, the number is 35 per cent.
While 17 per cent of Congress candidates are Brahmins, 16 per cent of BJP candidates belong to the caste. The AAP has fielded the most number of Brahmin candidates, at 19 per cent.
The BJP has given 17 per cent of tickets to the Vaishya community while AAP has given 13 per cent of candidate representation. Congress has 10 per cent of its candidates from the community.
In the Rajput community, there is just one candidate from Congress. Of the total AAP candidates, 10 per cent are from the community while the BJP allotted seven per cent to the community.
The number isn't a striking one compared to the existing assembly. As per the data sourced by the Trivedi Centre for Political Data., 50 per cent of the MLAs in the current Assembly come from upper caste. Of this, 40 per cent are from AAP. Six MLAs from the BJP are from the upper caste. Congress does not have a single MLA in the current assembly.