Mumbai: In April this year, the Election Commission accorded the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) the status of a “national party”, after the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP got a sizable vote share in last year’s Gujarat assembly elections with five MLAs — establishing itself as a state party in four states, including Punjab, Goa and NCT of Delhi.
As AAP became the sixth national party in the country, back in Gujarat, some party loyalists wondered if this elite national status was the only objective behind the party’s spirited campaign ahead of the state assembly polls.
In the 10 months since AAP secured a 12.5 percent vote share in Gujarat and got five MLAs elected in the 182-member state assembly, the party, which has been positioning itself as a credible alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, has undergone a massive churn in the state.
The party’s organisational structure has gone through a reshuffle, and many senior names, some of whom had been with the party for a decade, have left AAP mainly to join the Congress.
“The problem with AAP is that the party only gets active during elections. It changes the prabhari (in-charge), he gets his new team from Delhi, and they come here and restructure the organisation. Loyalists like me have still worked for so many years through it all,” claimed Bhemabhai Chaudhary, a vice-president of the party who had been with AAP in Gujarat for almost a decade.
He added: “But, in 2022, when the leadership was giving us hope of getting more than 40 seats, we had to console ourselves with only five, and there was no attempt by the leadership at fixing responsibility or figuring out where we went wrong.”
Chaudhary, who contested the last assembly election from the Deodar constituency in Banaskantha, resigned from AAP along with his supporters and joined the Congress last month.
According to political observers Gujarat is not an isolated case, and it is usual for the AAP to crumble after displaying poll heft, primarily owing to the lack of a strong local leadership.
Leaders from both the AAP and the Congress claimed that a change in leadership in the Congress’ Gujarat unit was another major reason behind seasoned AAP leaders jumping ship. Shaktisinh Gohil replaced Jagdish Thakor as president of the Gujarat Congress unit in June.
Meanwhile, the MLAs who made it to the Gujarat assembly on the AAP banner said that they were trying their best to raise pan-Gujarat issues, such as schools and health facilities inside the legislature and put forward comparisons between AAP-ruled states, such as Punjab and Delhi, and the BJP-ruled Gujarat to the best of their abilities.
They, however, added that they have not been able to effectively take their work inside the assembly to the people.
ThePrint reached Sandeep Pathak, AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP and in charge of Gujarat, via calls and a text message but did not receive a response till the time of publication of this report. The report will be updated once a response is received.
Also Read: Crumbling homes, vanished people—Gujarat Parsis stare at their roots turning into ghost towns
AAP in Gujarat
AAP established its Gujarat unit in 2013 and contested the 2017 assembly elections without even so much as making a dent. The party had contested 29 assembly seats, forfeiting its deposit in all of them and managed a vote share of 0.62 percent, according to Election Commission data.
Between the 2017 and the 2022 assembly elections, the party managed to foray into Surat and Rajkot — two cities of Gujarat with a significant Patidar population that was disenchanted with the Congress — along with the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad belt.
In 2021, the party got 28 percent votes with 27 of the 120 seats in the Surat Municipal Corporation against the Congress’s zero.
The victory propelled AAP to the position of the primary Opposition party in Surat, for the first time introducing a third force in a state that has largely been dominated by two-party politics — the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
In Rajkot the same year, AAP secured 17 percent of the vote share, and in Gandhinagar, it clinched 21 percent of the total votes.
For the 2022 assembly polls, the party put in special efforts, projecting itself as a viable alternative to the BJP and the Congress, and targeting anti-BJP votes that would have otherwise gone to the Congress.
It held mega rallies of Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal and AAP’s Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and filled the state with advertisements making appeals, such as ‘Ek Moko Kejriwal Ne’ (give Kejriwal a chance).
According to the information declared to the Election Commission, the party spent a total of Rs 33.8 crore on campaigning ahead of the 2022 state polls. In contrast, in 2017, it had spent just Rs 20.29 lakh on the assembly polls, stated the EC data.
An analysis of election results by ThePrint showed that AAP helped the BJP win and hurt the Congress’ chances in at least 33 seats, 17 of which were in the Saurashtra region, where the AAP and Congress tally was higher than the BJP’s.
“If nothing else, our performance corrected the impression that there can’t be a third party other than the Congress and the BJP in Gujarat politics,” Chaitar Vasava, one of AAP’s five MLAs in Gujarat who represents the tribal Dediapada constituency in the Narmada district, told ThePrint.
“At the time of elections, we thought we would aim for 40-50 MLAs. But, the last week was very difficult. The mahaul (atmosphere) was bad, our people and volunteers faced a lot of trouble. Then when the results came out, there was some dejection among party workers,” said Vasava, who is AAP’s legislative party leader.
The party overhauled its entire Gujarat unit in January 2023 soon after the polls, and since then, there has been a steady trickle of old-timers and senior functionaries leaving the party.
These include names such as Chaudhary; Arjun Rathva, tribal leader from Chhota Udepur; Vashram Sagathiya, who was a prominent Dalit face in AAP; Haresh Kothari, who was a general secretary in the party; Rajesh Prajapati, who was former west zone president, and so on, the AAP leaders said.
Moreover, a number of AAP candidates in the 2022 state polls have also reportedly crossed over to the Congress.
‘Leaders from Delhi didn’t listen to us’
One reason for the resignations, leaders from the AAP as well as the Congress said, was the change in leadership in the Gujarat Congress state unit.
In June this year, the Congress appointed Shaktisinh Gohil, senior party leader and Rajya Sabha MP, as the new president of the Gujarat Congress unit replacing Jagdish Thakor under whom the party posted its worst-ever performance in Gujarat in 2022, according to EC data.
A Gujarat Congress leader, who did not wish to be named, said, “There was massive infighting and factionalism within the Congress, and the party failed to correct the situation. AAP and Congress had similar issues to take to the people. Our leadership that should have gone to the people with these issues didn’t do their work.”
“With the change in guard, the disgruntled section of party workers and leaders, who did not subscribe to the faction controlled by the old guard, have become active, he added.
AAP’s Vasava also said, “Ever since Shaktisinh Gohil became Gujarat Congress president, he brought back all his old loyalists, and that’s why some AAP leaders have gone to the Congress.”
But according to Rathva, who contested the 2022 state polls from Chhota Udepur, there was a deeper malaise within the AAP.
Speaking to ThePrint, Rathva, who left AAP to join the Congress earlier this month, said old-timers like himself had worked hard to put an organisation in place — having eight zones each with a sanghatan mantri, undertaking tours of different parts of Gujarat and establishing a connect with people.
“All of this capital that we had created should have been put to use. But, before the elections, an entire team from Delhi came and they hijacked the poll preparations,” he claimed.
Their intentions must have been good, he said, “but work cannot happen like this.”
“The selection of candidates was not proper, after choosing candidates they did not ask about whether I am facing any challenges or need any help,” Rathva said.
He added that, after elections, some leaders like him insisted that there should be a seat-by-seat analysis of where the party fell short, but the high command did not show any discussions with these leaders.
‘A common thread across states’
Speaking to ThePrint, Amit Dholakia, professor at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, said there was a common thread that explains why AAP has tried to flex its muscle during elections across states and later started crumbling — and Gujarat was no exception.
“All the propaganda is focussed only on Arvind Kejriwal. AAP has no local leaders. Even Isudan Gadhvi (head of AAP’s Gujarat unit) does not have the kind of grassroots presence and experience required to drive a party in the state,” he said.
He added, “The five AAP legislators have failed to take up any issue strongly in a manner that sticks. The party is busy tackling internal bickering and problems. AAP built itself in Gujarat on the back of the Congress rejects. They are now all going back.”
To Dholakia’s point, AAP had similarly campaigned hard during elections in states, such as Goa and Uttarakhand as well — promising to provide an alternative to national parties. And post elections, the party, tackling infighting and defections, dissolved the state units to build them afresh.
Two of the five Gujarat AAP MLAs ThePrint spoke to said they have been raising issues related to the state in the assembly, but there are several constraints, unrelated to the party, that make it difficult for people to know about their work in the legislature.
Hemant Khava, the party’s MLA from the Jamjodhpur assembly constituency in the Jamnagar district, said, “In the last session (monsoon session that concluded last week) we raised the issue of a caste-based census and political reservations for the Other Backward Classes. We spoke about how Gujarat needs better schools and gave comparative figures from Delhi and Punjab. During the budget session, we compared the spending of the three states on agriculture and health to show how Gujarat is lagging behind.”
Vasava added more items to the list — malnutrition in tribal areas, lack of anganwadis, graft in the Narendra Modi-led government’s ‘Nal Se Jal’ scheme and so on.
Khava, however, said the Gujarat assembly meets for fewer days in a year than it should, and AAP MLAs get very little time to speak as per their strength in the house.
“Moreover, the government doesn’t broadcast the assembly sessions live, unlike in many other states,” he added.
Both Vasava and Khava said work on building fresh organisational strength after dissolving the Gujarat unit was underway in full swing.
The party has appointed its contact points in Lok Sabha and assembly segments, and there are district presidents and tehsil in-charges. They have also set up 22 wings to cater to different communities — students, minorities, agricultural communities, women, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, among others. There was also a karyakarta sammelan (party workers meeting) in Ahmedabad last week, they said.
“We are working silently and planning to make appointments right till the panna pramukh. It all takes time. And every party has to deal with some disappointment here and there,” Vasava said.
Khada added that those leaving the party must have their own compulsions.
“God cannot keep everyone happy. Someone gets a post, someone doesn’t. Someone is happy, someone isn’t. It is a new party. There will be some struggle,” he said.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
Also Read: Gujarat BJP ‘pamphlet’ plot thickens after Vaghela exit, removal of CMO official, 5th since May 2022