Delhi in flux: What AAP’s reset means for assembly polls

Days after AAP chief and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was granted bail by the Supreme Court in the liquor policy case, Atishi took over as the Delhi CM today. The efforts to read between the lines of the AAP chief’s decision to step down from the CM office have thrown up a string of conjectures. 

The possible reasons for this political shift range from the limitations staring at Kejriwal due to the strict bail conditions to his calculations about a reset for the Delhi assembly polls due next February. At the same time, its key rival BJP and the reluctant INDIA ally-cum-competitor in capital politics, Congress, are coming to terms with the flux unleashed by the change of guard by the AAP. The political scene unfolding in Delhi politics has meant that these key players are recalibrating their strategies in view of the polls slated for early next year. 

Even if the AAP chief sounds upbeat about the party retaining power for a fourth term, the party knows that the last few months have revealed some chinks in its armour of a resounding majority in the last two assembly polls. But there could be different reasons behind why the party has expressed a wish for advancing the polls to coincide with the assembly elections in Maharashtra in November.

To begin with, it could be seen as a means of confident messaging about its prospects in the polls, exuding its belief in retaining its dominant turf in the Delhi assembly. Such upbeat messaging, the party might reckon, would enthuse its cadre, keeping it together in times that are fraught with workers losing steam amid corruption charges against top leaders. At the same time, the party would want to capitalise on any whiff of sympathetic vote that the AAP chief would eye by projecting the party leadership as victims of the alleged witchhunt by the central agencies. But the most strategic reason could be the third one – not letting the BJP have its undivided attention on the Delhi polls in February by diverting a significant part of its focus to Maharashtra if the polls are clubbed.

Even if its wins in the last two state assembly polls were emphatic, the AAP will be alert to the fact that the BJP retained a significant vote share and, in fact, added to it. The party will also take into account that a more assertive Congress campaign could have made the contest triangular, if not tougher, in a number of seats. 

In the midst of all that, a key reminder came more recently. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP continued the trend of sweeping all the Lok Sabha seats in the last three parliamentary elections. This pattern shows that a significant section of the Delhi electorate is swinging between supporting the AAP and the BJP in state and Lok Sabha polls. In other words, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the choice of a large section of Delhi voters in the general elections, Kejriwal’s AAP has found favour with them in the assembly polls. In some ways, a decisive number of Delhi voters have become a textbook case of strikingly different electoral choices exercised in the national and state polls. 

This has also meant that the AAP would be careful about the dents suffered by two major planks on which it pitched past success in the assembly polls: anti-corruption and governance. Despite denying charges against them and alleging witchhunt, the point remains that the top brass of the party is under public scrutiny and probe by agencies for alleged involvement in corrupt practices, ranging from the now-scrapped excise policy to the liquor scam and money laundering. Even if that might not chip away at the party’s loyal voter base, the anti-corruption credentials of the party have come under cloud. The depletion of AAP’s anti-graft image is worsened by the party’s governance record, which has taken a beating with mishandling of water crises, waterlogging, garbage disposal, and a general sense of a crippled state of civic amenities in the capital. 

The dismal state of civic governance coincides with a time when the party is in power in municipal bodies of the capital as well. The party constantly shifts the blame for this to how the centre-appointed Lieutenant Governor’s office doesn’t let the Delhi government and civic bodies work with a free hand. The centre-Delhi government tension has often resulted in blame games, unprecedented in its scale as the LG office has been part of the Delhi government ever since the national capital got an elected assembly. Even if AAP’s core supporters may be sympathetic to the party attributing misgovernance to the LG’s interference, it doesn’t cut much ice with all sections of voters. This shifting of blame is often countered by the fact that the party claims credit for every achievement of the same government and the civic bodies but shifts blame to the LG for all its failings. The party can’t have it both ways, they argue.

Keeping aside these rankling issues of misgovernance, alleged corruption, and the dismal state of civic amenities, AAP may still be eyeing a comfortable win in the February polls because of the significant voter base it has built through freebies and a network of party workers. The populist measures like free electricity and water and free bus rides for women have largely contributed to the party erecting a structure of “charitable state”, to borrow political commentator Hilal Ahmed’s phrase, rather than building a welfare architecture. That, however, has brought a decisive section of transactional electoral support to the party – a reason to feel confident about overcoming the current challenges. But the party reckons that it can’t afford to lose sight of the fact that the allegations of corruption and the wrecked state of city governance have dimmed its key campaign planks.

The opposition sees an opportunity in these gaping holes, if not of victory, a chance to chip away the AAP’s dominant numbers in the assembly. The BJP, the only opposition party in Delhi assembly, is yet to find a chief ministerial face but will be assertive in its campaign, particularly in its attempt to corner AAP over alleged corruption and misgovernance. The dilemma facing the Congress has forced it to recede to the background as a half-hearted player in the last two assembly polls. That’s ironic for a party that, till 2013, was in power for 15 consecutive years in Delhi under Shiela Dixit’s leadership. Its Delhi unit is uncomfortable with an alliance with AAP, the signs of which could be seen in the last Lok Sabha polls. In the Haryana polls, the Congress and the AAP couldn’t agree for an alliance. There are enough reasons for the Congress to stay from seeing AAP as an ally in the February polls, as the local leadership of the party reckons that such an alliance could cost the party a section of its voter base. 

In the next four months, the stage in Delhi politics would be set with emerging variables putting the entrenched pivot of the AAP’s dominant presence in Delhi assembly under public scrutiny. This should also be seen in its interplay with the swinging nature of validation by the Delhi electorate and how the party manages to deploy populism against perceived dents in its anti-corruption plank. At the same time, the oppositional space can be animated by a triangular turn if, along with the BJP as the key rival party, the Congress goes back to its role as a challenger to its INDIA ally. There are several subtexts to the larger story of Delhi politics set to unfold in the months to come.  

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