What propelled Delhi's AAP to travel to Gujarat to battle the BJP

  • Dec. 7, 2022, 12:10 p.m.

The 10-year-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with its governments in Delhi and Punjab and two MLAs in Goa, needs only six percent of the votes or two seats in Gujarat or Himachal Pradesh to become a national party.

Currently, there are seven national parties: the BJP, Congress, CPI, CPM, BSP, NCP, and TMC. In the event of a review of their footprint, the CPM and BSP are likely to lose their national party status.

The results for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will be announced on December 8. While the exit polls are not favourable for the AAP in the hill state, the party is predicted to win 10–20 percent of the vote and 20–25 seats on PM Narendra Modi’s turf.

A good show in Gujarat, despite a record projected win for the BJP, will cap the AAP’s performance in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) election, where the exit polls predicted (the results will be out today) a roaring victory for the party over the BJP, which has been in power for 15 years.

It will be a boost for the AAP, given how its leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has projected himself as PM Modi’s challenger in 2024 when India votes to elect its new government.

Kejriwal has termed the Gujarat exit poll predictions "a big deal on debut." But it wasn’t exactly her debut. In fact, the AAP, then still a Delhi party, got drawn into making Gujarat, about 1,000 km away from the national capital, its political battlefield soon after suffering a pan-India humiliation in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Here’s the inside story:

THE DELHI DEBUT

When the AAP chose to contest the 2013 Delhi assembly election, it made political sense. The party was born out of the 2011 Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement in the national capital.

Before that, Arvind Kejriwal and his closest associate, Manish Sisodia—they led an NGO called Parivartan—had extensively worked in Delhi on issues such as the right to information, the public distribution system, and electricity. So, Delhi was a natural choice.

But the power run ended in 49 days when CM Kejriwal quit to protest the blocking of his anti-corruption Jan Lokpal Bill by his ally Congress. Delhi went under the President’s rule, and the AAP was free to have a shot at nationwide expansion.

However, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, AAP candidates forfeited their security deposits across the country, and Kejriwal himself lost to Modi in Varanasi. Even all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi went to the BJP. It was all gloom and doom. Older colleagues recall how the AAP leader broke down at a core-group meeting.

Feelings from Gujarat

Then there came an awsar in the aapda. Gujarat CM Narendra Modi's move to Delhi as prime minister was also to give, in the times to come, an opportunity for Kejriwal’s Delhi party to start embarking upon the unlikeliest of projects: planning to test Gujarat’s political waters.

This is how it all started. The AAP registered a massive victory in the February 2015 Delhi assembly election, and a more confident party appointed its go-to persons for several states. Gulab Singh Yadav, an AAP MLA from Delhi’s Matiala, got the Gujarat charge.

In Gujarat, Anandiben Patel, who had succeeded Narendra Modi as CM, couldn’t match his image of a strong leader who was tough on corruption (even her successors were destined to fail on those counts). Governance took a hit. A leadership vacuum was being felt.

A pan-Gujarat violent Patidar agitation seeking Other Backward Class (OBC) status for the community erupted in July 2015 and became a crucial factor in the AAP eventually reaching the western Indian state.

"Second-line leaders from that movement (from Manoj Sorathiya to Gopal Italia) wanted to be politically platformed." Unlike the Patels, the Congress wasn’t their choice. A section of the remainder of Gandhians already had its subtle support for the AAP. "Feelings started coming from Gujarat," a former AAP strategist told IndiaToday.in.

Meanwhile, the AAP wasn’t content with Delhi. In the February 2017 Punjab election, the party won 20 of the 112 seats it contested. It only strengthened its Gujarat dream.

Later that year, the party chose not to contest the polls in Punjab’s neighbour, Himachal Pradesh, on the premise that it wanted to regroup in Delhi—but it was game on in Gujarat.

THE 2017 SETBACK

In the run-up to the 2017 Gujarat election, Gulab Singh Yadav and others worked hard on the ground to build an organization. If one looks at pictures of Arvind Kejriwal’s rallies in Surat and other cities, good-enough crowds can be seen. There was traction for the party. But all its 29 candidates lost their security deposits and the party got only .1 per cent of the votes. It was humiliating.

However, Delhi again salvaged AAP’s honour in 2020 when the party repeated its performance in the previous polls. And the 2022 Gujarat election was already on the party’s mind.

"Even after the 2017 Gujarat poll drubbing, the AAP hadn’t stopped working on the ground." "Defying the cross-party general convention of team overhauls after defeats, the AAP had stuck to the more or less same set of people in Gujarat," the former AAP strategist said.

THE COURSE CORRECTION

But this time, the AAP wanted to build a foundation first. The party contested the 2021 Surat municipal election and replaced the Congress as the opposition party. Arvind Kejriwal’s party also significantly damaged the Congress in Gandhinagar.

The same template had unfolded in Punjab. In December 2021, the AAP defeated the BJP in the Chandigarh civic election. In the February 2022 Punjab election, the AAP contested all 117 seats and won a massive 92, becoming only the third party, after the BJP and the Congress, to have chief ministers in two states.

Then came the Gujarat polls. A buoyant AAP chose to contest all but one of Gujarat's 182 assembly seats. That Kejriwal is from Haryana didn’t matter. He knew a good show, in the face of 27 years of anti-incumbency against the BJP, would immensely bolster his claim of being PM Modi’s sole challenger.

DEMOGRAPHY FACTOR

Gujarat’s demography was also what got the AAP interested. Punjab is similar to Delhi, with a significant migrant population, mainly from the Purvanchal, which is composed of western Uttar Pradesh and eastern Bihar pockets. Gujarat’s Surat, Bhuj, Gandhidham, and Vadodara also check this box, with many migrants toiling in labour-intensive petrochemical and garment factories, besides agricultural fields.

Like in Delhi and Punjab, freebies (election promises of a set of free government services) had resonance in Gujarat, too, despite the glitz and gala of kite festivals, garba nights, and investor summits. Heavily subsidised electricity was AAP’s ticket to power in Delhi and Punjab. Arvind Kejriwal was aware of—and wanted to tap into—the high electricity bills issue in Gujarat.

Delhi, Punjab, and Gujarat are states with substantial urban pockets; even many villages are fairly developed with roads, water, schools, and hospitals. Goa is another such state, and the AAP opened its account in the last assembly election.

Himachal Pradesh’s case is different, which perhaps explains the not-so-favourable exit poll predictions for the AAP. The hill state doesn’t have too many poor migrants. There aren’t vast swaths of agricultural fields. Its drug factories and other such units employ mainly the local community.

While planning the Gujarat campaign, the party believed that political chemistry could be different in different states but that people, essentially, are the same everywhere: in need of good governance.

"A tablet of crocin works for a fever patient, irrespective of where she lives." If schools, hospitals, jobs, and security benefit people in Delhi, why won’t they benefit people elsewhere? "That was the belief," said a senior AAP leader.

WHAT NEXT

If the MCD exit polls hold, it will be Kejriwal’s first win against the ruling BJP, even though it’s a corporation. That it could also be another flashpoint with the Centre that has bureaucratic interventions in Delhi’s civic affairs will only suit AAP’s politics. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia could take over Delhi’s double-engine government, freeing Kejriwal for 2024.

The party will use the Delhi mandate and Gujarat’s show to bolster its "kattar imandar" claim that has taken a hit after the jailing of its minister Satyendar Jain in alleged corruption cases and the investigation against Sisodia in the liquor scam.

With the Mamatas, KCRs, and Nitishes not looking as serious as they did some time ago and the Congress again set to lose the MCD poll and Gujarat election, despite Rahul Gandhi’s ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra, Kejriwal has strengthened his challenger image, even though his party still has zero Lok Sabha MPs.

Author : Rajdhani Delhi Representative

Rajdhani delhi representative

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