After Sheila Dikshit’s exit from Delhi, the Congress has a mascot in Ajay Maken who is consolidating his position at an opportune time — when the AAP Government is facing its first major political challenge
For a party that doesn’t have much of a chance of winning the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in 2017, the Congress is unusually engrossed in choosing a chief ministerial candidate. The latest name to do the rounds is that of Sheila Dikshit, former Chief Minister of Delhi and once MP from Kannauj. As the daughter-in-law of Uma Shankar Dikshit, the late Brahmin stalwart, Sheila Dikshit may seem an appealing choice in theory. However, she is close to 80, has been out of Uttar Pradesh politics for decades and represents a party that is near absent at the grassroots.
Nevertheless Sheila Dikshit’s exit from Delhi politics is going to be significant for the national capital. She was Chief Minister for three successive terms, and though it ended badly with a humiliating defeat in December 2013, Sheila Dikshit’s period in office did transform the city. There were controversies and scandals, yes, but there were also solid achievements. Yet, as so often happens with a commanding leader, the Sheila Dikshit regime ended up becoming a banyan tree in the Delhi Congress, in the shade of which nothing else and nobody else grew.
With Sheila Dikshit’s potential departure, the factional lines in the Delhi unit of the Congress are going to be re-drawn. The shift to the Ajay Maken camp will become pronounced. Congress supporters will welcome this as Maken, a former Union Minister, is the natural successor to Sheila Dikshit and the most qualified Congress politician in the city today, notwithstanding his loss in the 2014 lok Sabha election.
Maken already heads the Congress in Delhi. He is set to consolidate his hold at an opportune time, when the Aam Aadmi Party Government, elected with a massive majority in February 2015, is beginning to meet its first major political challenge. The failure of the second round of the “odd-even” scheme was a turning point in public impatience. The experiment was marked by confusion and only ended up troubling law-abiding Delhi citizens. It has led to a closer scrutiny of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s record, particularly of his transport department, where a Minister has just been removed. It has also led to criticism of the Delhi Government’s remarkable advertisement budget.
Kejriwal has his adherents and his doubters. AAP is still seemingly well-placed in Punjab, which sees elections in January-February 2017. Yet, he would have liked to have been more comfortable in Delhi. In appointing 21 MlAs as parliamentary secretaries and giving them executive authority, Kejriwal was rewarding his flock as well as bypassing the legal ceiling on the number of Ministers the Delhi Government can have. This has opened up a crisis for him.
Parliamentary secretaries are not unknown in other States or in the Union Government. Even previous Delhi Chief Ministers have had parliamentary secretaries. Yet, ordinary Ministers have not; and no Government has had as many as 21 or even half that number. Parliamentary secretaries to ordinary Ministers in Delhi do not seem to be exempt from the “office of profit” category, which is out of bounds for a legislator. Should he simultaneously hold an office of profit, an MP or an MlA is liable to be disqualified.
This is the predicament the AAP Government finds itself in. While the matter will end up being assessed by the Election Commission and subsequently the judiciary, there is a danger that 21 MlAs, 30 per cent of the Delhi Assembly, may lose their legislative positions and be forced into re-contesting. This mini-Assembly election in Delhi may well coincide with the Punjab election of early 2017. Municipal elections in Delhi are also due, and here it is the BJP that is defending a very iffy record.
What all this amounts to is an imminent churn in Delhi politics. For the past 15 months, AAP has been virtually unquestioned. The magnitude of its 2015 victory — 67 seats out of 70 — pulverised its opponents. In the normal course, ruling parties have an advantage in the odd by-election that happens. In Delhi, given the sheer number of by-elections — 21 — that may occur if the law does not validate AAP’s case and given the fickle nature of the city electorate, AAP will have to work hard.
While AAP is still likely to finish ahead, for the BJP (three seats in 2015) and the Congress (zero seats) there are only gains possible. Indeed, Maken and his party seem better placed to provide that initial competition to AAP. If nothing else, that Maken is a recognised face across the city means he can come into his own as a campaigner in a post-Sheila Dikshit Delhi Congress.
The Congress has had its vote eroded by Kejriwal. It has lost important voter constituencies to AAP. It does, however, have a mascot in Maken. The BJP has the opposite problem. Its base vote is intact — 33 per cent in 2013, 32 per cent in 2015 — but the absence of a compelling chief ministerial face or clear leader in what is a bitterly divided state unit is hurting.
The local BJP unit has not thrown up a credible, pan-Delhi leader since the Madan lal Khurana generation that retired in the 1990s. The next cohort, those who are now in their late 50s and early 60s, have not quite evolved from municipal politics to modern metropolitan politics. Neither has the party been mindful of demographic, socio-economic and aspirational changes in the city.
BJP voters would hope the party rectifies some of this when the organisation is reshuffled in the coming weeks. The party has to be responsive to two key and sizeable voter segments — its traditional Punjabi backers and the vast migrant communities from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Agreeable, telegenic and yet rooted candidates from these groups have to form the twin props of the new BJP in Delhi. Till that happens, the party will continue to fail to impress the incremental voter.
(The author is distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com)