RIGHT ANGLE – Deciphering the Delhi-Verdict

The people of Delhi have given their verdict. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) now will be sitting in opposition in the Delhi Legislative Assembly after occupying the treasury benches for more than ten years. But they have denied its supremo Arvind Kejriwal to become even a MLA.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be forming the government in the national capital after 27 years, though one does not know who the Chief Minister will be as one writes this.

How does one explain the results? In answering this question, three facts need to be acknowledged dispassionately. One, notwithstanding all the hype, the fact remains that Delhi is not exactly a state; it is a Union Territory. I for one have always seen Delhi as an exalted municipality. Here, the power is divided between the central government and the so-called state government. It is pertinent to realise that the Chief Minister of Delhi cannot be equated or compared with the Chief Minister of a full-fledged state like Haryana, Punjab or Rajasthan.

Two, Delhi, to a considerable extent, is “Mini India”. Because, people from all over India come and live in Delhi, and practice their own culture, language and festivals. Delhi represents the concept of unity in diversity of India. That being so, the factors that prove to be winning ones, that too decisive ones, in the politics of different states such as caste, religion, freebies do not exactly work in Delhi. It is very difficult to succeed in Delhi politics if you are a one or two issue-based party.

Three, voters of Delhi vote differently in the national and assembly elections. At least, this has been the case since 2014. The BJP has won all the seven seats to the Lok Sabha in 2014, 2019 and 2024 general elections. And invariably, the BJP got more that 50 percent of the votes in these elections, making the phenomenon of joining of the opposition parties to have a common candidate against the BJP for success irrelevant.

It is a fact that the BJP has a solid vote base of around 38 percent in Delhi. Even when BJP was routed in 2015 assembly polls with three seats or for that matter in 2020 polls with eight seats, this vote base remained intact. But the party loses around 10 to 15 percent votes that they get during parliamentary polls when assembly elections are held a few months later.

In other words, 10 to 15 percent voters of BJP in the Lok Sabha polls were voting till now the AAP in Assembly elections. This, according to me, is the reflection of the point that I have made above that Delhi voters favour inclusive or multi-agenda politics. They found Narendra Modi to be representing this politics at the national level and Arvind Kejriwal at the local level.

In the just concluded elections, it seems these discerning 10 to 15 percent of the voters have abandoned Kejriwal and decided to stick with Modi. That explains why BJP and its allies like the JD (U ) have managed to keep about 49 percent of the votes, with a loss of not more than 4 percent than what they got last year in the Lok Sabha polls.

On the other hand , the AAP, which had managed to have more than 50 percent votes in 2015 and 2020, has come down with only 43.5 percent votes. Thus, its loss of power was inevitable.

In other words, the charisma of Kejriwal has failed this time. This is the singular reason why the BJP has won and AAP has lost, even though I am not disrespecting other factors like poor administration and suicidal freebies.

Congress, the third major party, has been of no consequence in Delhi, since it has become an one-agenda party under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, who cannot see or say anything these days other than identity-politics of caste and Muslims. As I have already explained, Delhi voters do not approve of the politics of one agenda or issue.

And that brings me to the Kejriwal phenomenon in Delhi that took birth in 2013 and became stronger in succeeding years. In the process, the people of Delhi had given a warning to the established political parties that they were not happy with them. They warned these established political parties that they may no longer be allowed to continue with business as usual by their usual politics based on money, muscle, caste and religion.

AAP became a phenomenon in Delhi only because people rebelled against established parties making politics family fiefdoms or exclusive dens where money, muscle and communalisation (be it religion or caste) play a huge role. In fact, the most positive takeaway from AAP’s victory in Delhi in 2015 was that its candidates proved that one could win elections without money, muscle, and identity-politics. And they believed that Kejriwal would be fighting against corruption.

Today, the APP can hardly be distinguished from any other political party. It has resorted to the age-old practice of identity politics on the basis of caste, community and religion. Like any political party, the AAP is no longer a party of a common man; all of its leaders have become too fond of luxuries, palatial houses ( see how Kejriwal spent nearly 100 crores in refurbishing his official bungalow) , foreign trips and mind- boggling perks. Kejriwal has made the MLAs of Delhi highest-paid elected representatives – drawing a salary of Rs. 3.2 lakh plus various allowances. There have been plenty of instances of the AAP ministers, including Kejriwal, employing irregularly their relatives and followers in the Delhi government.

Importantly, Kejriwal hardly talks of the evils of corruption these days, even though his entry into politics was via the movement called India Against Corruption (IAC). In this task, he attracted not only veteran social activist and crusader Anna Hazare but also some of the brightest young men and women of India. However, against the wishes of Anna, he formed a political party. But here too, soon after capturing power, he threw out all other famous co-founders like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.

A self-proclaimed crusader against corruption, he has not only campaigned in Bihar for the party of Lalu Yadav, India’s first major politician to have been convicted of corruption and ineligible to fight election for six years but also embroiled himself with liquor scam for which he went to jail and is now out only on bail.

A politician who claimed to be fighting the evil influences of caste and religion in politics, these days Kejriwal only talks in casteist or communal terms as “a secularist” – see his support for caste-based reservations in government jobs and his total silence on ethnic tensions initiated by extremists among Muslims.

How many of us have tried to bother over the implementation of Kejriwal’s 70-point agenda that was promised when he became the Chief Minister? What has been the progress in the fields of health, transport, roads and sanitation, the areas which clearly are under the jurisdiction of the Delhi government? Is there free Wi-Fi in market places? He has kept, of course, his words on the subsidies on electricity and water, arguably cheapest in the whole country.

But then, as we have seen, Kejriwal is no longer an “Aam Aadmi”. He claims himself to be special. He must have special privileges. He must have a special residence, better than that of even the Prime Minister. For him laws of the land must be special.

If there is anything Kejriwal has obsessed over, it is his insatiable ambition to become Prime Minister of India. Kejriwal has invariably been in the headlines for attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. He has described Modi as “a coward and psychopath”. Kejriwal seems to reach every troubled spot in the country to carry out his “hate politics” against Modi. And that was reflected in his fight for power with the central government, though his predecessors like late Sheila Dixit or Madan Lal Khurana or Sahib Singh Verma( whose son has, incidentally, defeated him) ran the Delhi government very successfully under the the same system of divided power with the Centre.

Kejriwal is too talented a person to not understand that Delhi is not a full-fledged state, and that it essentially remains a Union Territory, despite having an elected chief minister, a la, Puducherry. For him, the issue was not simply bureaucratic or legalistic; it had serious political dimensions — in fact, it was essentially political. Therefore, one saw a discernible pattern in what Kejriwal was focussing on ever since he became chief minister. He was simply not interested in his job as the Chief Minister of Delhi; he wanted to use his present position in such a way that the country started looking at him as a prospective prime ministerial candidate. His ultimate aim has been to rule from Delhi, but not as chief minister.

Viewed thus, the people of Delhi have fulfilled his wish of not becoming the Chief Minister.

But can he still nourish the ambition of becoming India’s Prime Minister after losing power in Delhi?

Well, time will tell.