The debacle of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the recent municipal elections in Delhi, which it badly needed to win, confirms a pattern in its downslide. Coming in the aftermath of its candidate Harjeet Singh losing his deposit in the Rajouri Garden by-poll, its failure to win Punjab and discomfiture in Goa, the AAP’s future prospects appear in jeopardy. The law of averages seems to have caught up with party’s abnormal rise. Whether it will be able to reverse the trend in the 2020 Delhi Assembly election, only time can tell.
Why is the AAP’s defeat in the municipal elections tellingIJ First, the BJP returning with an enhanced mandate, despite double anti-incumbency, is a lost opportunity for the AAP. Second, it is a negation of the achievements of the AAP Government in Delhi. Third, the AAP is actually an urban municipal-minded party; it does not have any strategic depth elsewhere, unlike the BJP or the Congress.
When did Arvind Kejriwal cross the political RubiconIJ It was after the UPA Government turned a Nelson’s eye to the fast at Jantar Mantar by Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Gopal Rai in July-August, 2012. They had to end their fast with great bitterness before declaring they were contemplating a political party. The AAP was launched on November 26, 2012. In an old article (Governance Now, August, 2012) this writer had criticised the Congress’s antipathy that pushed Team Anna to the red corner. It was tantamount to denying space to a civil society organisation. The Congress had patronised certain kinds of civil society activists — like those associated with its National Advisory Council (NAC). But it turned against those associated with Anna Hazare after the joint drafting committee on lokpal Bill collapsed.
But in those days there was a view that the AAP was being propped up by the Congress to counter the BJP. A highly circulated video by Rahul Mehta (of ‘Right to Recall’ fame) prior to 2014 general election claimed that AAP was a prop of Congress-like Praja Rajyam Party (formed by Chiranjeevi) in undivided Andhra Pradesh. Thus, in the end, the AAP would merge with Congress like Praja Rajyam did. The whole purpose was to prevent Narendra Modi from storming to power. This view actually gained some traction after the AAP accepted outside help of the Congress to form a Government with numbers in the Delhi legislative Assembly in December 2013. The newly formed AAP, notching up 28 seats out of 70, was a commendable performance no doubt. Interestingly, the BJP won 31, predominantly rural seats. But the AAP taking the Congress’s help was like supping with the devil. The AAP's campaign, from Team Anna state, had been directed against the Congress. The BJP was neither at the Centre nor in the State to bear the brunt. But the AAP’s decision confounded even its own supporters. The experiment itself petered out within 49 days. It only earned him a sobriquet from Narendra Modi, viz AK-49.
The AAP’s rise was aided by (a) enormous goodwill generated by the Anna Hazare movement and (b) disproportionate media coverage, especially by some Hindi channels that matter the most in Delhi. Corruption was the the AAP’s bull’s eye. Kejriwal had refused to comment on communalism or Pakistan-sponsored terror. In one of his interviews, he had walked away when pressed to comment on terrorism. He said that corruption was the bigger devil. But in the 2014 general election, Kejriwal pitted himself against Narendra Modi from the Varanasi seat. He reasoned that communalism was more dangerous. Thus suddenly, communalism not corruption had become his priority. This actually deepened the suspicion of an AAP-Congress understanding. It was, in fact, rumoured that the fall of the AAP Government had been engineered to leave its leaders free to counter the BJP at national level.
The defeat that AAP suffered in all seven lok Sabha seats of Delhi in May 2014 was seen as providential retribution. The four seats won from Punjab gave it a toe-hold in the 16th lok Sabha. The BJP swept all seven seats from Delhi. There was fair chance that it would have swept the Delhi Assembly also, were the pending election conducted shortly afterwards. But the BJP queered its own pitch in Delhi by dilly-dallying. The AAP’s sterling victory in 67 out of 70 seats was indeed a stunner. The party seemed to have regained lost ground in Delhi. It was a political rebirth of the party.
But since then the AAP’s conduct has sullied its image. This is independent of the AAP Government’s achievements in education and health. Its then law Minister Jitendra Singh Tomar got implicated in a fake law degree case. Another Minister, Sandeep Kumar, got bedraggled in a sex video scandal. A Minister is under the CBI scanner in a hawala case. Kejriwal threw out the party’s founding members, Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, arbitrarily. The preachy AAP’s moral high ground is thus lost. The BJP is the meantime is resurgent. The gamble of choosing a Purvanchali celebrity as its Delhi unit president has clicked. No wonder, the AAP has belatedly realised that its disconnect with the masses, not tampered EVMs, was behind its recent debacles.