The results of the Delhi Assembly election have got the loudest possible message for India’s opposition: If they don’t get united against the ever-growing might of the Bhartiya Janata Party then Indian politics will see its dominance for a long time to come.
Delhi is a mini-India. The election results are important because it’s reflecting the mood of a variety of Indians including Punjabis, Biharis, government servants, Pahadis, Muslims, women, and Dalits who reside in the city in large numbers.
If opposition parties remain divided the BJP will be quite secure in retaining its dominating position in Indian politics. In this scenario, the BJP will need only one formula strategy of divide and rule.
‘Freethinker’ Kejriwal
In many seats in Delhi, the difference in votes between AAP and BJP candidates is more or less the same, and the votes gained by Congress speak volumes about the failing experiment of the INDIA coalition.
The BJP has got 45.76 per cent votes while AAP has 43.55 per cent votes. In final outcome, the difference in votes is likely to be not more than 3 to 3.3 per cent. It means that Arvind Kejriwal and AAP have been defeated, but far from finished. Congress has got 6.36 per cent votes. If Congress and AAP had formed a pre-poll alliance, BJP would have found the Delhi challenge difficult.
Kejriwal lost to BJP’s Parvesh Verma by 4,089 votes. Congress candidate Sandeep Dikshit lost too but got 4,568 votes. If there was an alliance between AAP and Congress mahaul would have been different.
However, ifs and buts don’t take away the fact that the moment belongs to the BJP. Once again, the party has proved that its genius lies in organising the cadre to spread its politics and deploying with perfection the brand value of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the electoral battlefield.
Home Minister Amit Shah, who was overseeing the larger strategy against AAP chief Kejriwal is having a last laugh. Shah had to wait for 10 years to get this moment—the maverick leader who wanted to be a disruptor of traditional Indian politics got defeated through the ballot box. Shah has been saying for long that in Indian politics, a party without a declared political ideology is not sustainable, and not acceptable to people. Parties joining politics with national ambitions but without a well-defined national outlook will not survive more than two-three elections.
Shah has been strongly opposing the “freelancer” Kejriwal who wanted to play politics where he can pounce upon the Right-leaning BJP votes and Left-leaning Congress votes, too. Kejriwal wanted to enjoy power without getting into the ongoing ideology war.
BJP was highly motivated to take on Kejriwal because they hated to see him trying to poach Congress votes as well as the votes of BJP.
Congress will be the accidental beneficiary of BJP’s hard work to defeat Kejriwal. AAP was a major threat to the vote bank of Congress in many pockets.
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A saga of fake promises
Two decades back, Kejriwal was indeed a leader with difference. He was an organiser and showed off talent to build an institution. To build his political career, he first raised his voice against corruption. He took on big-time leaders like Sharad Pawar and even held a special press conference at the Constitution Club against India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. Then, he dropped the corruption issue entirely as soon as he came into electoral politics.
Before people could notice his opportunism, the AAP leader made convincing promises to provide civic administration. This was his masterstroke.
The civic management of urban India and the funding patterns of local governments are some of the biggest failures of all the governments, both the Centre and the states.
But when the time came to show his moral compass and fundamental ideological beliefs, Kejriwal played questionable games.
During the Delhi riots, he neither helped Muslim or Hindu victims, nor did he raise his voice, clearly, for or against protestors of Shaheen Bagh who were participating in a major movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA).
Kejriwal succeeded for a decade because he took up civic issues of education, health, water supply, free electricity supply for the poorest of the poor, vehicle traffic nuisance, and free public transport. For the first time ever Kejriwal got enviable coverage in national and regional media while fighting for civic issues. But today’s results show that people have massively reacted to the failed promises of Kejriwal.
Delhi residents’ plight is here to see. The air pollution is a national shame. The killer air remains uncontrollable. The garbage clearance is a headache in all areas. Whenever Kejriwal takes stock of his defeat he should list unclean Yamuna waters at the top.
Most importantly, people were fed up with hearing excuses that the AAP government is not allowed to function by the BJP-led central government. The BJP indeed employed all tricks of political trade to hit Kejriwal hard, but that can’t be the reason to allow Delhi AQI 400 plus and play with children’s future.
Bus rides are free for women, but buses never come on time and its frequency is the issue on most routes. Instead of serving Delhi well, Kejriwal became too ambitious and started expanding without building a coherent party and thought processes within the party.
AAP’s rule in Punjab is nothing to rave about that might have inspired Delhi voters.
Kejriwal who was a phenomenon in Indian politics made many mistakes, but his biggest mistake was Delhi se jo vaada kiya vo nibhaya nahi. He broke promises.
Sheela Bhatt is a Delhi-based senior journalist. She tweets @sheela2010. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
This is not a BJP win. It is defeat of an opportunist who just had fake promises on which he didn’t deliver. His vote share of 43.xx% is a result of just freebies. Delhi today is a dump.
The columnist tweeted the vote share of the political parties. A 2% difference between BJP and AAP, hardly a tsunami, and the Congress party’s 6.39%. Wasted. Utter lack of statecraft by Mr Rahul Gandhi. Driven a stake through opposition unity.