Time’s AAP

The picture that emerged after the Aam Aadmi Party’s spectacular fall from a whopping 67 out of 70 seats in the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections to just about one-fourth of the wards that the BJP won in the corporation polls on Wednesday was reflective of three larger trends in Indian politics. The first is the indisputable dominance of the BJP which, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his indefatigable party president Amit Shah, has become an unstoppable political force. Even as the BJP was romping home in Delhi’s three municipal corporations, Shah was in Kolkata challenging Mamata Banerjee and creating an air of inevitability about his party’s ascendance in West Bengal. The Modi-Shah duo is clearly crafting the BJP into the new-age Congress, a natural party of governance and the voters’ first choice in new India. The second is the continued political irrelevance of the Congress which stood third in the corporation elections. The bickering that has erupted in the local Congress is symptomatic of the loss of direction in the face of an ascendant BJP. The third is the disintegration of the dream for a new India that Arvind Kejriwal and AAP created in the aftermath of the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare.

Fresh from the movement, AAP emerged as a feisty debutant on the Indian political landscape. It won parliamentary seats in Punjab in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and took over Delhi, cornering a whopping 54.34 per cent of the vote share and 67 of the total 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly elections held barely months after the Modi wave had swept the BJP to power at the Centre. But since that extraordinary victory, Kejriwal has rapidly lost the plot with his multiple conflicts with the Centre including a territorial war with Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, criminal cases against several MLAs, and spats with many central leaders including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who has sued the Delhi chief minister for defamation. Twenty-one AAP MLAs have been disqualified under the Office of Profit rules. Given this backdrop, AAP failed to retain the voters’ faith. In the results for the three civic bodies — South, North and East Delhi Municipal Corporations — the BJP was set to get about 183 of the total 270 wards for which elections were held on April 23. AAP stood a distant second and trends till late Wednesday afternoon indicated that the Congress was third with a tally of about 32 wards.

The response of the young party and Kejriwal to the voters’ verdict has been even more disappointing. Instead of displaying grace and the need to introspect, Kejriwal has gone on a tirade against the electronic voting machines. A bad loser can hardly hope to inspire confidence among his followers. AAP looks set to be a blip rather than a shining star on India’s political horizon.

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