Respondents on January 4, just two days before Delhi election dates were announced, were asked: "Whom would you like to see as the CM of Delhi?" Amid nine options, 69.5 per cent voters chose Arvind Kejriwal, the incumbent, as their preferred CM. The Aam Aadmi Party leader is followed by BJP's Harsh Vardhan who got a negligible 10.7 per cent followed by Congress's Ajay Maken with 7.1 per cent votes, as preferred face for Delhi Chief Minister. Other BJP leaders like Delhi unit Chief Manoj Tiwari got a meagre 1 per cent vote and Vijender Gupta 0.4 per cent.
But, the very same respondents, totalling 13,706, had completely different answers when asked about "Best candidate to be the Prime Minister of India?" A whopping 62.4 per cent of the respondents preferred Narendra Modi as their Prime Minister. A distant second was Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, with just 8.1 per cent of the respondents choosing him as their favourite for India's Prime Minister.
Probably, AAP sensed this mood five years earlier when it used Modi's face on its website while asking people to vote for their party in the Delhi elections. The accompanying slogan said: "Delhi Speaks: Modi for PM, Arvind for CM."
That mood, it appears, still holds true to Delhi, five years down the lane.
( With inputs from IANS )