“AAP has now evolved into being like any other political party and they are paying for it,” says senior journalist and former AAP spokesperson, Ashutosh.
AAP’s political relevance in Delhi and Punjab is under threat. Between 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, AAP’s vote share has dangerously reduced from 33 percent to 18 percent in Delhi and similarly went from 24 percent to 7.3 percent in Punjab.
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With Delhi Assembly elections just eight months away, The Quint spoke to experts and senior journalists to decode the party’s dismal performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
Strategy to Campaign for Full Statehood for Delhi Failed
Arvind Kejriwal repeatedly said, “If you want complete statehood then vote for the AAP candidate.” But was there enough thought given to analyse if the people of Delhi considered statehood a pressing Lok Sabha concern? Ashutosh disagrees.
“The AAP had no narrative for national elections. They tried to whip up a narrative of statehood, a plank that did not resonate with the people of Delhi at all. It should be an emotional issue but the people of Delhi don’t have anything that necessarily binds them, it is a cosmopolitan culture.”
Referring to places where the thought of statehood would resonate with the electorate, Ashutosh brings up language as an important binding factor. “You have Marathi in Maharashtra, you have Punjabi in Punjab but what does Delhi have? Their strategy was flawed because they made a political issue an issue of the public and the people rejected it. They had nothing to offer in terms of national politics.”
Political commentator Aarti Jerath says the plank of statehood did not work cause the people of Delhi knew the government could not deliver. “With seven seats how was the Kejriwal government going to deliver on such a promise? You need numbers and AAP does not have them on the national scale.”
Journalist Pheroze Vincent, who covers the AA , says the party realised only a week before voting that the plank of statehood was failing. “They had begun preparing for the Lok Sabha polls in 2018, but realised only in the last week of campaigning that statehood wasn’t resonating. They tried to bring up issues of employment, education, health and other things, however it was too late.”
Priority Now, Get Muslim Vote Share Back
“Until 48 hours before polling, it seemed like all seven seats will come to AAP, but at the last moment, the complete Muslim vote got shifted to Congress. We are trying to figure out what happened,” Kejriwal said and he is correct. Pheroze Vincent said, “Right now they have no idea how the Muslim vote shifted to the Congress. They are all trying to figure what they can do to fix it and they only have so much time.”
Aarti observes that the people of Delhi saw the political battle between the Congress and the BJP. With Gandhi, the Muslims saw a prime ministerial face, but supporting Arvind Kejriwal in these Lok Sabha polls, they knew, would get them nothing.
Pheroze adds, “His comment has not gone down well with the community. He almost made it sound like the Muslims are responsible for his defeat. To ensure secularism survives is not the job of the minority community.” Ashutosh says in the next eight months it will be interesting to see how they will get this vote share back. “The Congress has made a return to politics in Delhi with this vote share.”
Congress’s vote share has risen from 15 percent to 22.46 percent this time. So is the case with the BJP, whose vote share rose from 46.4 percent to 56.6 percent in the 2019 general election.
AAP’s Loss in Punjab Was in Waiting
“The AAP completely failed in Punjab. After 2017 the party leadership did nothing to strengthen the party in Punjab. The party remained in disarray till the very end,” Ashutosh says.
After bagging an unprecedented 4 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, followed by 20 seats in the 2017 assembly polls, which made it the principal opposition party, AAP in Punjab was riddled with infighting and factionalism. Two MPs, Dharamvir Gandhi and Harinder Khalsa, were expelled for anti-party activities. Gandhi who was Patiala MP formed his own party and Khalsa joined BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Voters in Punjab saw that AAP had no clarity, nothing to offer.
Several MLAs left the party and joined the Congress or BJP. AAP’s opposition leader in the Assembly, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, formed the Punjab Democratic Alliance (PDA) which failed miserably in the Lok Sabha elections. Khaira himself stood a distant fourth in Bathinda.
The one Lok Sabha seat that has been retained by an AAP MP, is Sangrur, where Punjab unit chief Bhagwant Mann has won. Vincent says he won not because he was from AAP but because he is popular. Jerath concurs, and adds,
“While Bhagwant Mann won because he is popular, the fact is that he is not an organisation man, and does not have the ability to hold the party together.”
Vincent adds that Mann has intentionally kept a safe distance from the factionalism. “If he went around trying to fix the party in the state he would have had no time at all to campaign in his own constituency,” he says.
Trouble Brewing for 2020 State Polls?
Despite having 67 of 70 Assembly seats in Delhi, the AAP was in prolonged talks to ally with the Congress. This exposed that they are weak, Ashutosh says. Considering that the Assembly polls in Delhi are next year, alarm bells should be ringing for the AAP.
“Currently I can not say I am confident about whether or not the AAP will return to form government in the 2020 Delhi state polls. The Muslim vote share has returned to the Congress and that is a big problem ahead,” Ashutosh says.
He adds that in 2015, there was a strong sympathy factor the Kejriwal government and people gave them a chance cause they wanted alternate politics.
“But AAP came to power and behaved like anyone else. It was visible that the AAP was becoming more and more unpopular in Delhi. They got around 26 percent vote share in the 2017 municipal corporation elections as well,” Ashutosh said.
Jerath says that in the 45 days that Kejriwal was in power the first time around, before his government fell, he did two big things – “He slashed electricity rates and making some litres of water free for all. So in 2015 when the elections happened again they wanted to give him a shot which led to the staggering mandate of 67/70. In 2020, the BJP, with this huge Lok Sabha mandate, will seriously challenge AAP, and continue to use government agencies to attack them repeatedly.”
Vincent says while the AAP has worked well in governing Delhi, the battle for 2020 will be much harder. Most urgent is the need for the AAP to come up with a strategy to get the Muslim vote back.”
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