The most unique and admirable aspect of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership is that it seldom displays black eyes even in the worse of poll bashing. The most recent example being the local body polls in Punjab. On the day that Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government was celebrating the completion of one year of its second full-term, the results of the civic polls in Punjab came out, where AAP was placed a distant third behind the Congress and the Akali Dal.
Expectedly, there was no acknowledgement by the AAP leadership of the humiliating defeat. But within a few days, it had bounced back with its Surat ‘victory’. Though the critics have credited Delhi’s ruling party making a debut in BJP’s fortress to handing over the reins to Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), the fact remains that Arvind Kejriwal had the foresight to galvanise Patel votes, long disenchanted with BJP, in his party’s favour.
What’s more pertinent is that AAP decimated Congress in Surat, as it has done in Delhi. The defeat in Surat came despite PAAS founder-convenor Hardik Patel having joined the Congress some years back. No wonder soon after the defeat, Patel came out firing all cylinders at Congress leadership for not having utilised his services adequately. There are by-elections happening in five municipal seats in Delhi. Of these four were held by AAP and one by the BJP.
The possibility of the repeat performance by both the parties is expected as the Congress in Delhi remains dormant as its present president Anil Chowdhary, despite the youth tag, has largely failed to stop the continuous loss of cadres. A positive performance in Delhi would for certain enthuse the AAP leaders to go on another media blitzkrieg claiming much larger political space than actually ceded to it, as it did recently releasing a map showing its pan-India presence.
This enthusiasm is their both strength and weakness. There is a lesson to be learnt from Punjab where despite the renewed push extending unwarranted hospitality to agitating farmers at the Singhu border, the Aam Aadmi Party came a cropper. AAP’s aggressive wooing emanated from the fact that during the last Lok Sabha polls in 2019, not only its seat count had come down from four to one but its vote share too shrunk from over 24 per cent in 2014 to just about seven per cent.
The 2021 Punjab civic polls refused to buck this trend for AAP despite its leadership including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal leaving no stone unturned to gratify agitating Punjab farmers at the borders of the national capital. This is should alarm the AAP— that while marching ahead in Gujarat there are also signs of losing the territories where it has failed to consolidate. It cannot just help itself by preying on the spoils of a decadent Congress in various states but must build its own power base.
Congress has gained the most from the shift in AAP’s vote bank in Punjab with the state returning to the old times of electoral contest between the Congress and the Akalis. It’s time for AAP leadership to introspect that their claims of achieving ‘never before’ development goals in the city don’t have many takers outside Delhi.
Those who closely follow the state’s politics understand that AAP’s success story in the national capital is pinned on two factors – freebies and polarisation. The Delhi Model of AAP should be propped by ideas of new politics rather than falling on time-tested political stratagems and preying on motheaten state units of the Congress.
SIDHARTH MISHRA
The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst