The Election Commission has announced February 5 as the voting date for Delhi’s Assembly election, with results on February 8. The AAP is eyeing a fourth term, emphasizing governance over rhetoric, while the BJP campaigns on development under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. The Congress, contesting independently, targets both rivals.
Although Delhi is a union territory, its elections have a bearing on national politics. This is one of the fewer places in India that the BJP has failed to win despite using all its might to defeat the AAP. The reason for this is the AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, so far three-time Delhi chief minister. Over a decade ago, he was one of the many noted activists who were a part of the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare.
The AAP was founded on an idealistic agenda, which has since frayed. The party introduced an alternative political vision for India that transcended secular-Hindutva politics of Congress and the BJP respectively. This was a politics that aspired to transcend identity and ideology and represented the aspirations and expectations of the common man. It also offered a basic commitment to a clean, fair and just system, something that might seem utopian given the state of politics in the country which basically thrives on appeal to identity and ideology, a part of which is pernicious in their envisioning of India.
AAP’s first government supported by Congress lasted just 49 days. Kejriwal resigned in a huff when Congress refused to back his bill on Lok Pal, an anti-corruption institution. This disappointed AAP constituency and the party built on a sustained protest against corruption was seen as incapable of providing a stable government. Many people as much as wrote off the AAP. But in the next election in 2015, the party returned to power with a two-thirds majority. It went on to win the third successive Assembly election in 2020.This makes Kejriwal the only leader with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee who has been able to stop the BJP juggernaut.
But all bets are off this time round. After the all-important Maharashtra win, the saffron party is back in the ascendent. The party has all but shrugged off the setback in the general elections and is back to its normal aggressive self. Should that happen, it would be a major boost to the BJP and will set it up for victory in the subsequent Assembly election in Haryana. At the same time, the AAP is no pushover and could be expected to register yet another landslide victory. All eyes are now on the unfolding battle, and only time will tell the outcome.
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