New Delhi: In 2015, few months after Bharatiya Janata Party’s fantastic win over the Congress party, the Arvind Kejriwal led fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) riding on its appeal to fight corruption and make the welfare of the citizens at the center of their governance swept the polls. Kejriwal had smartly managed to convey to the vast legion of his supporters that included a majority of those who had voted for the BJP that they were not being to disloyal to the national party by displaying their preference for AAP. During the run-up to the assembly polls then, Kejriwal and his supporters had sent out millions of emails and WhatsApp seeking votes for Modi and himself. It’s not clear whether his campaign had the tacit approval of the RSS or any other Hindutva outfit.
In 2020 assembly polls, BJP’s aggressive campaign that tries to polarize the Delhi voters on religious lines threatens to undo Kejriwal’s attempt to project himself as ideologically agnostic. The 55-day old protest of women at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh against the citizenship amendment act (CAA) and the fear of the government bringing in an exclusionary and draconian National Register of Citizens ( NRC) is changing the way this assembly election would be fought.
Kejriwal thought that his government’s work on civic issues like power, water, schools and hospital would be enough to help him win the polls. This thesis is being challenged.
BJP wants its voters back now and is making it amply clear to them that they are opposed to Kejriwal’s politics, priorities and political preferences. Unlike in 2015, BJP’s enemy here is AAP and they do not even mention Congress party in the passing. In other words, the elections is turning out to be a 2 horse race with the Congress rapidly slipping to an also-ran- that is after it had put up a creditable performance in 2019 parliamentary elections from the national capital.
Congress leaders believe that Delhi assembly elections is not their beef to fry as the party challenging the BJP and its divisive agenda is the AAP. Many of them are resentful of the effort the party leadership is putting up in many assembly seats- especially those that have traditionally voted for the Congress party. Not surprisingly, some of the kins of the Congress leaders have joined the AAP and managed to corner tickets too. One of them is former Congress MP, Mahabal Mishra, whose son crossed over to AAP to bag a party ticket. Mishra was suspended from the party.
The speed at which the Congress is melting in Delhi is changing the composition of AAP’s support. Now they reflect the same voter base of the Congress party with the minorities backing them with aggressively. Protestors at Shaheen Bagh do not resent the fact that Kejriwal or his party did not visit them all these weeks. They are aware of the political damage AAP leader’s visit to the protest site could do in a sharply divided polity. BJP does not loathe from calling Kejriwal as a terrorist and blames him for the protracted sit in. Home Minister Amit Shah has tried to obfuscate the fact that the maintenance of Delhi’s law and order is a central subject in which AAP could not be held responsible for the recent violence around Shaheen Bagh, Jamia Milia or Jawahar Lal Nehru University. In the past few weeks, there have been three incidents of firing, which has found support and legitimacy from slogans raised by central ministers like Anurag Thakur.
Before the BJP began its campaign against Shaheen Bagh protest claiming that it was an attempt to break the country, AAP had seemed to be sitting pretty. There was near unanimity that AAP was winning hands down and could match its 2015 success. In the past few weeks, the BJP seems to have staged some recovery. Now people have begun to say that Kejriwal would not be able to sweep the polls, but this assertion does not take into account the fact that if Congress vote melts and moves towards the AAP then it could still do quite well. Recent opinion polls that show AAP winning 59-60 seats out of a total of 70 seats reveal this shift that is happening on the ground.
If this plays out as predicted by the pollsters then it would be a setback not just for the leadership of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, but also Congress party, which would feel squeezed out due to clash of the two different narratives.
