Politics in 2022: AAP's rise and rise, Congress face-saving amid BJP juggernaut

With BJP continuing to maintain its political momentum, AAP achieving the feat of the national party, and Congress somehow maintaining a balance despite being decimated in Gujarat, the political scenario in the country in 2022 was convoluted with a slight hint of change. ETV Bharat's Nisar Dharma looks back at India's political palette in 2022 -- whether it is still all saffron, or some new hues have begun to appear.

Hyderabad:India's political landscape witnessed some major ripples if not a Tsunami in 2022 with Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) making its strongest attempt thus far to replace Congress as the main political rival to the Bharatiya Janata Party. As far as the poll calendar was concerned, it was a tight schedule with the country witnessing Rajya Sabha polls, 5 Lok Sabha by-polls, 7 State Legislative Assembly elections, 28 Assembly by-polls, and local body elections in 9 states. The Parliament also elected the country’s President and Vice-president this year.

The BJP fought hard to maintain its momentum in saffronizing the country's political canvass with the highlight of the party's resume being the recent Gujarat win in which "Bhupendra broke Narendra's record" or so was the emphatic victory described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he celebrated the result with his partymen.

Congress, meanwhile, continued to struggle as it lost Punjab early in the year to Aam Aadmi Party, though some consolation awaited it at the fag end of the year as it managed to wrestle Himachal Pradesh from BJP.

It was a perfect start for the year for AAP as the party began eyeing other states courtesy of the shot in the arm in Punjab where two former Chief Ministers Parkash Singh Badal and Capt Amarinder Singh along with incumbent CM Charanjit Singh Channi and several other heavyweights of the Punjab politics, immutable for decades, were crushed under the winning wagon of the Aam Aadmi Party.

Punjab was not just a simple victory for Kejriwal's party. In fact, the AAP trounced the 2022 Assembly polls by winning over 90 seats in the 117-seat Punjab Assembly. It is the first time that the party has expanded its political footprint beyond Delhi. Buoyed by the landslide victory, the AAP also made big inroads in Rajya Sabha with five of its candidates getting elected unopposed and taking its total in the Upper House to 10. Kejriwal eyed Modi's turf and thus began AAP gruelling poll campaign in the western state of Gujarat.

Kejriwal even managed to turn the Gujarat elections into a BJP versus AAP narrative as the Congress, the principal opposition party, stuck to a 'silent' campaign. AAP followed the same playbook and deployed the same ecosystem the BJP does during elections -- picking up fights with rivals, launching counterattacks and sending out the desired message to the voters through aggressive poll campaigns, spokespersons and social media -- to build the narrative in its favour.

The party even appointed over a thousand "social media warriors" to drive its poll campaign amid the fierce face-off with the BJP over a range of issues including the alleged corruption in the Delhi excise policy and the alleged misuse of central probe agencies by the Modi dispensation.

As the results came, AAP had managed to breach Gujarat, though not as emphatically as it would have expected. The party won just five seats though it had contested 180 of the total 182 seats. Results showed that over 120-odd AAP candidates could not even save their deposits as they failed to even get one-sixth of the total votes polled.

Key faces of the party in the state including chief minister candidate Isudhan Gadhvi lost to BJP despite Kejriwal and his second-in-command Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann leading several roadshows and rallies in Surat. The AAP won five seats and secured a vote share of 12.92 per cent in the Gujarat assembly elections, as declared by the State Election Commission.

Though he had expected more from Gujarat, Kejriwal thanked the people for helping the AAP "breach the BJP's fortress" and asserted that the party would win the state the next time. "I am thankful to the people of Gujarat for helping us attain the status of national party. Very few parties enjoy the status and now we are one of them. Ours is only a 10-year-old party," the Delhi chief minister said.

Already recognised as a state party in Delhi, Punjab and Goa, the AAP was just one state away from earning the status of national party. To earn the status of a national party, a political outfit needs to be recognised in at least four states. It needs to win at least two seats and 6 per cent of the votes polled in the assembly election to be recognised as a state party.

Who is placed where

At the start of 2022, the BJP ruled or was a part of 17 state governments. Congress, on the other hand, was in power in 5 including the coalition governments in Maharashtra with Uddhav-led Shiv Sena and in Jharkhand with Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.

Currently, the BJP holds 16 states. It lost Himachal Pradesh in Assembly elections and Bihar after Janata Dal (United), split with the BJP, formed government with help of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress. However, the BJP came back to power in Maharashtra by toppling the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government with the help of rebel Shiv Sena MLAs.

The Congress, on the other hand, is part of 5 state governments, including Jharkhand and Bihar. It has also registered a thumping win in Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections. The AAP defeated the incumbent Congress government in Punjab Assembly elections and also opened their account in Gujarat Assembly in 2022. Meanwhile, the regional parties held Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal and Mizoram.

In Parliament

At the beginning of the year, the BJP had 96 Rajya Sabha seats. Though the tally touched 100-mark in May, it reduced to 92 after the Rajya Sabha elections held in June. The Congress also lost 4 seats in the upper house of the Parliament.

The AAP has made the most gains this year - 7 seats. Its tally in the House increased to 10 from 3 after winning the Punjab Assembly elections. The YSR Congress from Telangana also increased their tally to 9 from 6. Meanwhile, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD, 3 seats), Naga People’s Front (NPF, 1 seat), and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP, 1 seat) have lost their representations in Rajya Sabha.

No big changes were registered in Lok Sabha. While BJP, Trinamool Congress, and SAD’s tally increased by 1 seat this year, Samajwadi Party (SP) lost 2 seats. The AAP lost its only seat in the lower house of the Parliament as it lost the seat to SAD in the by-poll necessitated by the resignation of Bhagwant Singh Mann after he won the Assembly polls in Punjab and became the Chief Minister.

KCR's shift from Telangana to Bharat

Down south, a politically tumultuous 2022 saw the fortunes of the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu remaining stable while that of the principal opposition AIADMK diminishing. In the second year in office, the single most important development in the DMK was the heir apparent, Udhayanidhi Stalin's elevation as a minister.

Meanwhile, seeking to expand its electoral footprint beyond Telangana, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) changed its name to Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) with Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao eyeing a national role ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Heralding the party's foray into national politics more than 21 years after it was launched with the objective of carving out a separate Telangana from the state of Andhra Pradesh, the TRS rechristening it as BRS hoping to take on the BJP and emerge as a national force to reckon with by bringing together like-minded opposition parties.