While the BJP will take two to three days to announce its Chief Minister, it is likely to be a toss-up between Parvesh Verma, Rekha Gupta and Ashish Sood.
NEW DELHI: For the first time in its 12-year history and after three Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party will sit in the opposition, with Delhi voters reducing it to just 22 seats, down from the 62 it secured in the 2020 polls.
The AAP’s expectation—that the series of freebies it had announced in its manifestos, apart from the existing ones, which amounted to more than 15 freebie schemes—would ensure that the voters would overlook its perceived failure in improving governance and the series of alleged corruption scandals its leaders were accused of, failed to materialize as it lost almost 10% vote share that it got in the last elections. Among the AAP leaders who lost were its chief Arvind Kejriwal and his number two, Manish Sisodia.
The BJP, for the first time after losing in the 1998 elections, came to power, winning 48 seats, more than double the number that AAP won. While the BJP will take two to three days to announce its Chief Minister, it is likely to be a toss-up between Parvesh Verma, Rekha Gupta (who won from Shalimar Bagh) and Ashish Sood (who won from the Janakpuri seat). Parvesh Verma, because of his political background, his experience as a two-time Member of Parliament, and the fact that he defeated Arvind Kejriwal, is being seen as the strongest of all the contenders.
However, given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and Home Minister Amit Shah’s tendency to pick a “dark horse” as CM, as has been witnessed in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Haryana, it will not come as a surprise if someone other than Verma is made the CM. Delhi will see a BJP CM take oath after October 1998, when the late Sushma Swaraj became Chief Minister, replacing Sahib Singh Verma, who had replaced Madan Lal Khurana, the first CM post the 1993 polls. Due to AAP’s loss, now all the states surrounding Delhi—Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh—will have a BJP CM. During the 1993-98 time period, Haryana had a Congress CM, UP had a CM from the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, with only Rajasthan having a CM from BJP, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
While Congress failed to win any seats, as the polling numbers revealed, it contributed in a large manner to AAP’s defeat by taking away anti-BJP votes from AAP candidates and reducing their overall votes. Initial analysis suggests that the Congress led to AAP’s defeat in at least 10-12 seats. It improved on the 4.26% of the votes it got in the 2020 elections, getting 6.34% this time, which translated to 6 lakh votes. Kejriwal lost to BJP’s Parvesh Sahib Singh by 4,089 votes, almost equal to what the Congress candidate, Sandeep Dikshit, received. The decimation of AAP will come as good news for Congress, as it now has reason to believe that it is slowly regaining the “secular” space, as well as the Dalit and Muslim vote banks that it had lost to AAP in the city. At the macro level, this defeat of AAP is likely to lead to the disbanding of much-talked-about I.N.D.I.A bloc.
Of the 95.5 lakh votes that were cast on 5 February, BJP got about 45% (or 43 lakh votes), while AAP got 43% (41.33 lakh votes). This suggests that AAP’s support was spread thinly across many areas, while BJP’s support was packed into fewer, more targeted areas, helping them win more seats. This also indicates the success of BJP’s poll management and the groundwork that was done by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to bring voters from “supportive” areas to the booth.
The BJP performed exceptionally well in North-West Delhi Lok Sabha seat, winning 9 out of 10 Assembly seats, followed closely by East Delhi with 8 out of 10 seats, and West Delhi, where they won 8 out of 10 seats as well. The party also secured 7 out of 10 seats in New Delhi and 6 out of 10 seats in Chandni Chowk. In North-East Delhi and South Delhi, the BJP won 5 out of 10 seats in both constituencies, marking their weakest performances.
Both the seats contested by BJP allies—JDU (Burari) and LJP (Deoli)—were lost.
AAP FAILS TOUGHEST TEST
The AAP, which created a niche for itself in Delhi by calling itself India’s first party born to end corruption, ultimately paid the price for the numerous corruption taints and for moving away from the austere lifestyle that its leaders had promised the voters.
It was clear from the beginning that the AAP was fighting its toughest election since its inception, as The Sunday Guardian had reported in December: “AAP faces toughest election yet as BJP sees chance for a comeback in Delhi.”
One of the main challenges AAP faced in this election was its inability to effectively showcase its achievements and governance, while being stuck in fighting legal cases and the corruption taint, when it should have been telling the voters of Delhi what it had done and what it intended to do if voted to power again.
Apart from the much-publicized liquor vendor scam, where almost all its top leadership had to go to prison at one point or another before being released on bail, which, as per CAG estimates, led to a loss of Rs 2,000 crore to the public, Kejriwal himself came under a corruption taint after it was revealed by another CAG audit that Kejriwal spent Rs 33.66 crore on renovating his official residence, a far cry from his promise that AAP leaders would not act like the “other” politicians.
The AAP was hoping that its three-term anti-incumbency, series of corruption allegations, and failure to bring the promised changes on the ground would be offset by the series of freebies that Kejriwal announced in the run-up to the election. AAP strategists’ obsession with freebies continued despite severely impacting infrastructure in Delhi, as the state focused more on giving money to people rather than improving the rapidly deteriorating civic amenities and infrastructure in the national capital.
The AAP, as often happens with political entities that win successive elections, found itself surrounded by money bags and a small coterie of advisors, including those in the media, who became infamous for their arrogance and efforts to take retributive action against negative media reports.
However, the party’s hopes of coming back to power started waning on election day itself, with its own internal assessment at the end of polling suggesting that the party would end up with 30 seats, six less than the magic number. To counter the anti-incumbency and anger against its sitting MLAs, it even dropped almost one-third of the MLAs who had won in 2020. But this too didn’t help the party, as voters voted against AAP as a party and were not swayed by individual candidates’ names.
The AAP also changed the seat of one of its most prominent leaders, Manish Sisodia, indicating how strong the anger was against the party. However, even then, Sisodia, after moving to Jangpura from Patparganj, could not win. He lost by 675 votes, a defeat which perhaps could have been averted if the Congress candidate Farhad Suri would not have secured 7,350 votes. Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj, another prominent face of the party and Durgesh Pathak, too lost from Greater Kailash and Rajinder Nagar respectively.
In November, Kailash Gahlot, another prominent leader with a clean image, left the AAP and joined the BJP. This was also an indication of which way the winds were blowing. Gahlot won on the BJP ticket from Bijwasan.
BJP CAMPAIGN
The BJP’s campaign in this election was not centred around a few key faces, unlike in previous elections. Instead, it was run by multiple teams, each assigned specific responsibilities. Home Minister Amit Shah, who was closely involved in the election management, gave strict instructions to his party leaders not to engage in any internal rivalry, something that had cost the party dearly previously.
The corruption taint, especially the “sheesh mahal” (referring to the opulence in Kejriwal’s house), was raised repeatedly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the campaign, which ensured that all hopes of the AAP that this issue would not stick, were washed away. The term “AAPDA” (referring to disaster), which PM Modi coined at the start of the campaign, made its impact as it set a political narrative that focused on the weak governance that Delhi saw under AAP’s rule.
Similarly, the party’s national vice president Baijayant Jay Panda played an effective role in election management and ensured that the party campaign was focused, with all its leaders working in tandem. He was extremely confident of the BJP increasing its vote share substantially, something which ultimately happened. With AAP defeated in its base of Delhi and reduced to just 22 MLAs—with even Kejriwal losing—the party, lacking a unifying ideological thread, now faces a significant existential crisis. Its only other stronghold, Punjab, is also showing signs of voter disillusionment, according to the latest assessments.
This, coupled with a prolonged legal battle and potential prison time for many of its leaders and functionaries because of the alleged corruption they have been involved in for over a decade, is going to further exacerbate its situation.