14

Feb

Delhi Polls: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose!

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R.K. Misra

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New Delhi | Friday | 14 February 2025

The Delhi State Assembly is finally in the BJP's bag. Victorious or vanquished, love and hate are heaped plenty, depending on the side of the divide. Bouquets and brickbats are exchanging places with shameless singularity based on want, need, and greed. Reactions, similarly, range from the pious to the profane.

The desperation of the BJP for Delhi is akin to the lament of a direct recruit commissioner who missed being promoted to inspector. It has taken 27 years in the wilderness for the BJP -even after helming India for a decade plus under Prime Minister Narendra Modi- to get into the driver’s seat in Delhi. Also pasted on the party has been the humiliation of being reduced to holding 3 and 8 seats, respectively, at the hands of a babe-in-the woods Aam Admi Party (AAP) in the 2015 and 2020 Delhi Assembly elections. Delhi has a 70-member State Assembly.

The party came to power at the Centre in 2014 on the slogan “minimum government, maximum governance” but has spared no effort thereafter to truncate the powers of the elected body, including neutralising the Supreme Court judgment. Nevertheless, the BJP deserves its victory for the sheer elephantine effort of men, material and ‘manna’ it marshalled in the just concluded polls. It outgunned and outmanoeuvred its principal opponents lock, stock and barrel, the Congress to a humiliating blank and AAP to a respectable Opposition’s 22 seats.

However, this is neither about the BJP nor its numero uno, Modi. It is about AAP, the Congress, and the Opposition front, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, commonly known by its backronym I.N.D.I.A.

 

Article at a Glance
The BJP has finally secured control of the Delhi State Assembly after 27 years, marking a significant political shift. This victory comes after the party faced humiliating defeats in the 2015 and 2020 elections against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
The BJP's win is attributed to extensive efforts and resources, outmanoeuvring both the Congress and AAP, which now holds 22 seats. The article highlights the contrasting leadership styles of Prime Minister Modi and AAP leader Kejriwal, both of whom exhibit authoritarian tendencies.
Kejriwal's ambition to expand AAP's influence has led to setbacks, particularly in Gujarat, where his party's presence has inadvertently benefited the BJP. The opposition alliance, I.N.D.I.A., struggles with internal contradictions, as regional parties hesitate to collaborate with Congress, the only national party capable of challenging the BJP.
Modi's aggressive political strategy leaves the opposition with limited options, emphasising the need for unity against a formidable adversary.

 

For starters. Arvind Kejriwal and his fledgling AAP deserve compliments for grinding to dust a Modi-powered BJP juggernaut in the Delhi Assembly elections in 2015-2020. It was a superb job efficiently executed. AAP achievements in Delhi need to be seen because they were at the receiving end of the might of the Central Investigative Agencies, with ministers and even the chief minister finding themselves in jail.

A simplistic analysis of the ensuing election results is that a city populace harassed by the constant tug-of-war between the centre and the state chose discretion as the better part of valour. Morality issues can wait party governments will at least ensure frictionless functioning on basic issues, just precisely what the BJP wants to control and an Opposition-free India. Earlier, it was Congress-mukt Bharat.

Whether engrained or acquired, both Modi and Kejriwal have a highly honed authoritarian streak. The former Gujarat chief minister earned his spurs in the rough and tumble of Gujarat politics. He put pawns into place and bided his time before making a jaguar-like final burst of speed to breast both the chief ministerial and prime ministerial tape.

In the case of Kejriwal, his tearing hurry to spread his wings countrywide even before building the party network lies at the root of his troubles. After the success achieved in ousting and replacing the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress government in Delhi, Kejriwal was firing on all cylinders. In a political shortcut, he contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 against Modi from Varanasi and was roundly defeated. Soon after, AAP moved to Gujarat in 2017, contesting 30 Assembly seats with its candidates losing deposits in most of them. The Congress fared very well, bringing the BJP down to less than 100 seats in an 182-member House.

However, Kejriwal’s aggressive forays in Gujarat began to hurt the Congress and to the advantage of the BJP. In almost all cases, AAP gained little, and the Congress lost big while the BJP gained. The Municipal Corporation of the state capital of Gandhinagar had been a bastion of the Congress since its inception, but it lost to the BJP big time in 2021 after AAP turned it into a triangular contest. The BJP won 41 of the total 44 seats, the Congress 2 and the AAP one seat. This continued in other states as well, with the Congress losing its government to AAP in Punjab.

It is this self-centred approach that has seen Kejriwal suffer in Delhi at the hands of the Congress. Highly placed sources say that Rahul Gandhi still favoured an arrangement of sorts, but the Kejriwal orchestrated move of announcing candidates beforehand put paid to the move.

The contradictions that the 28-party Opposition front, I.N.D.I.A., faces is that the regional parties in power in the states want their cake and eat it too. They are reluctant to accommodate the Congress in their respective states while they would want it to spearhead their battle with the BJP. Like it or not, the Congress remains the only national party with the wherewithal and following to take on the Modi-led BJP. Interestingly, he is one person who knows this very well and is, therefore, ruthless in attacking it even as he goes about dismantling the Congress-era official structures and replacing them with his handpicked and selected choices.

Modi’s politics brooks no allies; he does not believe in sharing power. It is a very short-term marriage of convenience. Election for him is war, and Opposition is the enemy. And the enemy has to be annihilated by any and every means at one's disposal. Even before one election is over, preparation for the next one, however distant it may be, begins right away. He has eyes, ears and errand boys marked out for specific work spread all over.

All in all, he is a fearsome opponent to take on. And the Opposition has no national options except the Congress. Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.

 

(The author is a Gandhinagar- based senior journalist who has been associated with TOI, Pioneer and other national newspapers)
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