AAP’s emphatic victory and its impact beyond

With the Congress more or less out of the race, the battle for Delhi was largely between Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and BJP. The election campaigning had almost everything: development, welfare measures, nationalism, communalism, religion, polarisation, guns, bullets and conspiracy theories. But the verdict has been majorly in favour of development and welfare schemes. Not surprisingly, AAP has almost repeated its 2015 performance and its tally of 62 seats in a 70-member assembly, is a decisive triumph for local issues over nationalistic rhetoric. This is more or less a repeat of what happened in Haryana, Jharkhand and to a certain extent in Maharashtra. But the BJP did not learn a lesson and has paid a huge price. Delhi is the sixth straight state assembly defeat for the BJP since December 2018.

If AAP was predicted to win the Delhi election, what has surprised many is its margin of victory for the second time in a row. The political unicorn had won an unprecedented 96 per cent of the seats in 2015. In 2020, it has won 89 per cent of the seats, which is an unprecedented repeat. Whether in national or state elections, no party has achieved such success in India’s electoral history. What makes AAP’s victory truly remarkable is that it came on the back of development platform: the promises it made in 2015 and the work it did in five years. Simply put, the Delhi voters handsomely rewarded Arvind Kejriwal and his party for keeping the promise of delivering basic public services.

What’s heartening about the political start-up’s spectacular victory is that in spite of ferocious religious polarisation and spiteful campaign, AAP refused to be drawn into acrimonious debate and vicious verbal duals with the BJP, but remained single-mindedly focused on its development narrative. What’s also significant about its victory is that AAP has proved that elections can also be won on the development plank alone. With AAP’s model of governance triumphing over BJP’s campaign of hate and divisive politics, the Delhi election outcome has propelled Kejriwal’s model of governance to the centre of national attention and debate. This is a significant achievement for both the Delhi chief minister and his party which is barely eight years old.

Political parties and leaders have won elections on development planks over the past two decades: Modi in Gujarat, Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh and Modi once again in 2014 general election. But Kejriwal’s landslide victory stands out because of AAP’s sheer dominance in terms of seats and vote share. While AAP has retained its vote share at around 54 per cent, a huge again over the 18 per cent it had fallen to in 2019 Lok Sabha poll, BJP has managed to increase its vote share to 39 per cent, a 7 per cent gain. The Congress, on the other hand, suffered a loss of around 5 percentage points in vote share, which is more of a tactical loss as the Congress played it smartly to prevent triangular contests, which would have helped BJP.

Elections are won, as Modi proved in 2014, with the help of a credible story and popular protagonist. AAP had a popular protagonist in Kejriwal and a convincing story with believable evidence on ground to back its claim. In contrast, BJP went to the farthest end of overselling its 2019 general election narrative by embarking on an extremely polarising campaign. It failed because it had no protagonist and was a repeat and was rendered irrelevant by AAP’s compelling story. BJP can take heart from the fact that its vote share has increased on the back of a dangerously divisive and vicious campaign. It must have also realised that such a campaign has its limitations. But it is unlikely that BJP will abandon it anytime soon; in fact, it may even repeat it more ferociously in West Bengal and Assam next year, while in Bihar it might be toned down.

It will be an exaggeration to say that the BJP’s hyper-nationalism narrative has lost its traction completely. It will also be an overstatement to suggest that AAP’s Delhi win is a negation of CAA, NPR and NRC. Delhi is a small and urban state; its electorate is cosmopolitan and aspirational and the poll verdict is more a reward for AAP’s performance than an outright rejection of aggressive Hindutva politics. BJP overplayed its hyper-radical politics because, in absence of a performance-driven story to its credit, it had little choice but to fight AAP with the tried and tested weapon which it has used effectively in the past. But it did not work in Delhi and has cost BJP an important election, which it desperately needed to win against the backdrop of anti-CAA protests with its epicentre at Shaheen Bagh.

In Delhi, Home Minister Amit Shah was the BJP’s poster-boy, a tactical move to hide the prime minister from the embarrassment of facing yet another defeat that would have dented his image further. So it will be interesting to see whether the BJP will once again revert back to over-depending on Modi to win Bihar later this year, which seems a distinct possibility. What is also a distinct possibility is Amit Shah returning to play the BJP’s poster-boy role in West Bengal and Assam next year. Delhi, where he intensively campaigned, was a big embarrassment for him; West Bengal and Assam will be the ideal battle grounds for him to run a polarising campaign once again to prove that he is not just a backroom strategist for BJP but also a vote-getter.

While it looks like the Congress sacrificed its chances of putting a decent fight and winning a few seats in Delhi to facilitate a direct contest between AAP and BJP because of vote banks overlap, its second successive duck in Delhi election is a big setback for the grand old party which ruled Delhi for 15 years before AAP reduced it to a single digit in 2013. While this does not pose an existential crisis for the party yet, it needs to seriously introspect and reinvent for its survival and revival. Lastly, enthused by its impressive show in Delhi, AAP will try to spread its wings in other states to go national over the next few years. Five years ago, it was an “activist” party. Now it has matured into a mainstream party. Nationally, since Congress is far behind the BJP in terms of seats and vote share, AAP can possibly hope to fill the vacuum in the Opposition space if Congress does not get its act together.