Reportedly facing the wrath of anti-incumbency against the congress government at the Centre, which was embroiled in several cases of corruption, then delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit was looking for a panacea in 2013 to overcome adversities and come to power for the fourth time in the row. Meanwhile the development agenda of Dikshit had brought her back to power in 2003 and 2008.
Furthermore the visionary leader that she was, she planned an overhaul of the city during the Commonwealth Games 2010 and had believed that the fresh wave of development would see her getting another term from the people. Further her development drive was drowned in the cacophony let loose by the Anna Hazare movement, whose product is the Aam Aadmi party (AAP). Meanwhile then congress member of lok sabha from West delhi, Mahabal Mishra, had warned Dikshit about an impending defeat and had suggested to her that she could gamble by giving a large chunk of tickets to the party workers from Purvanchal (east up and Bihar). Dikshit, who was never comfortable with Mishra, saw it as a subterfuge on the part of the Purvanchali leader to create a claim for himself as rival to her.
Apparently this was to prove costly for the congress, which lost its Purvanchal vote bank lock, stock and barrel to the AAP, both in the 2013 and 2015 assembly polls. Also arvind kejriwal gave both space and tickets to the Purvanchalis and reaped a rich harvest and the delhi assembly today has 13 MLAs from among the migrants from eastern up and bihar with Gopal Rai, a minister in the Kejriwal government; sanjay singh, a rajya sabha MP; and dilip Pandey and Somnath Bharti, prominent faces of the party. Accordingly, 33.5 per cent of the total 1.46 crore voters across the 70 Vidhan Sabha constituencies are Purvanchalis. Most of the Purvanchali migrants are settled in areas that comprises of unauthorised colonies of Delhi.
