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Vijaya Pushkarna
Vijaya Pushkarna

AAP

Party pooper

33aapoffice Gates of gloom: The AAP office in Delhi wore a deserted look after the result of the civic polls was announced on April 26 | Sanjay Ahlawat

AAP’s future appears bleak after its poor show in Delhi civic polls

February 2015 was the best of times for the Aam Aadmi Party. That month, it won 67 of 70 seats in the Delhi assembly elections, offsetting the Modi wave that had catapulted the BJP to power at the Centre nine months earlier. It was a dream result few had foreseen. Like Modi, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal had promised good governance and development.

But, was that victory a one-time wonder? That is the question being asked after the BJP won elections to all three municipal corporations in Delhi by a wide margin. Of 270 wards in three civic bodies that went to the polls on April 23, the BJP won 181, while the AAP could win only 48.

Ashutosh Kumar, professor at the department of political sciences at Panjab University in Chandigarh, said he was now convinced that the 2015 verdict was “an aberration to a great extent, and now the party [AAP] is neither movement-based nor electoral-based”. “For a party to have a longtime survival rate, it needs to have an organisational structure and presence, ideological positions on society, economy and issues like secularism and beef [ban],” he said. “It also needs to have a collective leadership.”

According to Kumar, the AAP is bereft of any committed support base. The middle class, which voted for the party in 2015, has gravitated to Modi. “In fact, the BJP’s results are on account of anti-AAP votes,” he said. “He [Kejriwal] alienated the people with his theatrics whenever he was in Delhi, and frittered away opportunities by aiming for Punjab and Goa, and now Gujarat.”

The AAP won four seats in Punjab in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Buoyed by that result and the 2015 victory in Delhi, Kerjriwal spent more than a month in Punjab in the run-up to the assembly elections there in February. But the party ended up losing the momentum it had gained in the initial phase of its campaigning. “Here it was a party, not a movement like in Delhi,” said an AAP leader in Punjab. “People did not flock to join it; workers had to enthuse people. But, suddenly, locals were dropped, people from Delhi were brought in, and candidates were chosen without understanding the ground reality. It was a mess.”

The AAP won just 20 of 112 seats it contested in Punjab. The party leader said it was the victory of individuals on the AAP ticket, and not vice versa.

In April this year, the AAP suffered a humiliating defeat in the byelection to the Rajouri Garden assembly seat. The BJP registered a huge victory, while the AAP came in a distant third. With its poor performance in the Delhi civic polls, the AAP’s future now appears bleak. “The 2020 elections may see the party go the way it came,” said Dhirender, an autorickshaw driver who campaigned for the AAP. He said the party had made a lot of promises, but failed to fulfil them.

The people seem to perceive Kejriwal as someone who has no qualms about walking away from his responsibilities to fulfil his political ambitions. As Delhi chief minister, he holds no portfolio, and his tenure has been marked by his constant battle with the Centre. The BJP alleges that his only activities has been “making excuses” and hurling “allegations and accusations” against Modi.

“Kejriwal made tall promises, ignited massive hope and offered a dream vision of a new kind of politics,” said BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli. “He worked diametrically opposite to what he promised. A raucous cacophony cannot replace governance.”

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