Is AAP unravelling, as its image takes a hit?

The Aam Aadmi Party, which swept the Delhi elections in breathtaking fashion in February, putting big national parties to shame, has itself presented an unprepossessing sight in the past month. This makes many wonder if the party elected to run the government in the nation’s capital for five years will be able to withstand internal shocks and deliver the goods.

The AAP today is a house divided in a manner that just did not seem thinkable in the first flush of its formation. This is not unlike the case of the Janata Party back in 1977 that was created with the blessing of Jayaprakash Narayan after the Emergency, which had become unpopular all across North India, but did not take long to show cracks before unravelling altogether. Being the result of the amalgamation of several parties with mutually antagonistic ideologies and bound together by little more than an antipathy towards the Congress, the Janata Party was a thoroughly artificial phenomenon. The AAP seems a lot similar in some respects.

In high places and at the MLA level it has a lot of those of the Lohia socialist stream, the RSS-inspired Hindutva variety, and some of even the far left inclination, besides a wide variety of genuinely idealistic people who are critical of the establishment but don’t have the political tools to give themselves a roadmap for party-building.

This may be AAP’s basic weakness. In Delhi it has emerged as a party of civic issues and doe-sn’t seem to possess the wherewithal to have a common platform on the major national questions of the day, which can carry together the different elements that constitute its core.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was the charismatic figure around whom everyone coalesced for a time and swept to a famous victory. But his severe limitations have been exposed. The language he has used for senior colleagues, and the tactics he has shown himself capable of in his drive to power and then staying put, mark him out as no different from the clever politicians of the older parties who are widely disdained. People like Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Medha Patkar had a sort of idealistic appeal, but they were shown the door in the AAP national council meeting on Saturday. A lot of street-level muck has surfaced as a result.

It’s now immaterial whether a formal split occurs. Those in Delhi may stick with Mr Kejriwal as he enjoys constitutional authority and can dispense patronage. In the states it could be a different story. But a popular, supposedly idealistic experiment has taken a beating.

The language Mr Kejriwal has used for senior colleagues, and his

tactics, mark him out as no different

from the clever politicians of the older parties who are widely disdained