‘The contest, which was earlier thought to be a tripartite contest, turned out to be a bipolar one’.
NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) withdrawal from the Himachal Pradesh Assembly election has immensely befitted the Congress. This, in fact, was one of the key reasons for the Congress registering a victory in the state and pushing the incumbent BJP to second position.
The AAP in Himachal Pradesh registered less than 1.50% vote share and this, political analysts believe, benefitted the Congress in the state as the contest which was earlier thought out to be a tripartite contest turned out to be a bi-polar one, and the anti-incumbency votes consolidating in favour of the Congress.
The vote share difference between the Congress and BJP in Himachal Pradesh was less than even one percent, with the BJP securing 43% vote share and the Congress getting around 43.90% votes in the state. But this meagre percentage of vote share led to a difference of 15 seats, with the BJP securing 25 out of the 68 seats, while the Congress getting 40 seats and the AAP ended up with no seats in the state.
Comparing this with the Gujarat Assembly elections, where the AAP went gung-ho with their election campaign in that state, has been able to dent the Congress vote share, resulting in the Congress securing less than 20 seats in Gujarat where the party was the principal opposition with over 70 seats in the last assembly election in 2017.
Congress supporters and election analysts say that the AAP’s massive campaign in Gujarat, unlike that in Himachal Pradesh, has been able to split the opposition vote in Gujarat which has cost the Congress. The AAP which for the first time fought the Gujarat elections was able to secure 12.90% of the vote share from the state, while Congress was able to get 27.28% of votes in the state.
The Congress had in the 2017 Assembly elections for Gujarat secured 41.4% of popular votes when it was a direct contest between the Congress and the BJP. However, the total of AAP and Congress’ vote share from this election adds up to 40.18% of popular votes, while the BJP has got 52.5% vote share this time, increasing it from 49% since 2017.
Political observers also believe that the AAP’s aggressive campaigning in Gujarat had confused the opposition voters and further led the fence-sitters to vote for the incumbent, which resulted in a historic win for the BJP in Gujarat. The AAP however, decided to withdraw from the Himachal Pradesh elections sometime in the beginning of this year, when the party thought that it was unable to garner the traction it was willing to from the hill state. The party was also unable to keep its cadre together in Himachal Pradesh and more often than not, the party workers expressed differences with their leaders and many even joined the BJP.
It is also pertinent to mention here that the AAP had dissolved its entire state unit for Himachal Pradesh after the party’s state president along with the secretary and a plethora of other AAP leaders joined the BJP. The AAP had then said that it would be working to form a new committee that would oversee the elections in the state. Ever since then, the AAP had struggled to get a formidable cadre in Himachal Pradesh that would drive the party’s campaign in the hill state.
According to multiple AAP leaders, the party had almost given up on Himachal Pradesh as it learnt that there were few takers for the AAP in Himachal Pradesh and that the party would focus its campaign in Gujarat and the Municipal Corporation elections in Delhi.
However, the AAP fought in almost all the 68 seats in Himachal Pradesh, but the campaign in that state did not garner steam for the party.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and the top leaders also did not campaign for the party in Himachal Pradesh. This resulted in a poor show for the party where the AAP in almost 80% of the seats secured less than 1,000 votes, resulting in their candidates forfeiting their deposits.