NEW DELHI: If the 2015 Assembly elections was the zenith of the Aam Aadmi Party, then the 2019 Lok Sabha will go down as the nadir for the Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit. Though the two elections were different, the AAP now faces the danger of being wiped out in the national capital itself. And, the whitewash couldn’t have come at a worse timing — the Delhi Assembly election is due next year.
In Delhi, its vote share was 32.90 per cent when it drew a blank in the 2014 general elections. The same old story played out this time. More importantly, the AAP is now pushed to the third position (18.1 per cent vote share), with the Congress unseating it from the second place.
Political observers say that the AAP’s main poll plank of full statehood for Delhi did not click with the voters. In public, the party put a brave face in the face of defeat and congratulated PM Narendra Modi for the sweeping mandate of elections. AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, who launched the party campaign 10 months ago, did not come out of his residence the entire day.
Even if the AAP had succeeded to stitch a pre-poll alliance with the Congress party on seven seats, the margin of victories leave no doubt that the script would have been no different had the two parties joined hands in Delhi.
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In the 2014 general elections, the AAP fielded 434 candidates across the nation and won just four in Punjab. But, the 2015 Delhi Assembly election was a watershed as the AAP swept Delhi, winning 67 of the total 70 Assembly seats. Its vote share was 54.3 per cent.
The downward spiral began, according to many, with a bitter internal feud that led to the ouster of founding members Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan. This year, the AAP put up new faces in all the seven parliamentary seats in Delhi.
Had Kejriwal been astute, the 2017 Delhi civic polls could have rung a bell among the leadership. The AAP’s vote share stood at a mere 26.23 per cent. But, the party went on to either lose or pique its leaders including Kapil Mishra, Alka Lamba, Devender Sherawat, and Anil Bajpai.