With the electoral race announced by the Election Commission of India on January 7, the main contenders are the governing AAP and the strong challenge posed by the BJP. The battle for the seat of power in Delhi would not attract sharp attention but the fact that it is the country’s capital and its people have reposed faith in the nascent AAP since 2013.
Seeking to renew its mandate under the leadership of its Convenor and former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the AAP hopes to be voted back for the third consecutive time, equalling the record of Congress under its Chief Minister late Sheila Dikshit. Founded in 2012, AAP fundamentally altered the city politics relegating the Congress to a distant third on the strength of its campaign to provide a clean and corruption-free government, in contrast to the party in power then.
Twelve years later, the wheel has turned a circle. Now the AAP, which rode into office on the crest of the anti-corruption wave created by the Anna Hazare movement, is under the odium of graft in the implementation of several of its policies. The cases related to the alleged scam in the policy of liquor reeks, are yet to reach any conclusive stage, the charges levelled initially by Congress and scooped up by the BJP can be a sticking point that the AAP would like to scrape off.
The AAP hopes its core support base remains convinced of the narrative set by the party that former Chief Minister Kejriwal and his then Deputy Manish Sisodia as well as other Cabinet colleagues were victims of a political conspiracy woven by the BJP. While a section of the middle class, which shifted its loyalty from Sheila Dikshit to Kejriwal disenchanted, the AAP and its Convenor bank upon the people especially the lower middle class which reaped benefits under various welfare schemes in education, health, and other services.
Welfare versus populist schemes
The AAP boasts that its Mohalla (locality) clinics have allowed the underserved access to low/free cost quality health care while the infrastructure in government-run schools has been transformed to give private schools a run for their money. Water supply too comes at a negligible cost. Even the middle classes acknowledge grudgingly that bills for domestic power consumption have come down and Delhi enjoys uninterrupted supply, virtually eliminating the need for alternate sources of backup.
Adding to the season of populist schemes or Revadis (Freebies) as the BJP seeks to describe is AAP’s promise of granting ₹ 2,100 per month for women, forcing the Congress to shore up the figure to ₹2,500. The BJP too is struggling to keep pace just as it launched similar schemes in states like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, months before the assembly polls to reap an electoral harvest.
Aware of the deep impact such welfare measures have on the electorate and those targeting women, who now form nearly half of the population can be ignored at its own peril, at a rally in Delhi PM Narendra Modi promised continuation of the schemes when the BJP is voted to office.
However, the opposition is building a parallel narrative that the outgo on welfare schemes resulted in the coffers turning empty. The AAP, these parties charge, neglected infrastructure in Delhi, and ignored the building of flyovers/ roads or adding city buses. Worse, the government did not build any new hospitals or colleges in Delhi, whose population keeps growing.
AAP versus BJP and the Congress
Stakes in the current elections are the highest for AAP. It is Delhi, which is the prime centre of its politics, and Kejriwal/AAP will not like to lose its grip. Besides his profile, Delhi catapulted AAP onto the national stage and punched beyond its weight.
On the part of the BJP, Delhi has remained beyond its reach even after the spectacular victories the party recorded in the general elections since 2014. What baffles political calculation is the BJP swept all the Seven Lo Sabha seats in 2019 but in the 2020 Delhi polls the AAP registered landslide victory. The best case scenario for the BJP is to bring down the AAP number of legislators from 62 in the 70-member assembly and restrict it to a simple majority. As for the Congress, it has little to lose. The party’s vote share shrunk to a single digit in 2020 and hopes to claw back to double digits.
—The author, K V Prasad, is an author and political analyst. The views expressed are personal.
Read his previous articles here
