Calming the Storm: Kejriwal’s Ideological Promiscuity and the AAP’s Defeat

The storm of new governance that arose in Delhi in the form of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has now calmed down in that very Delhi – calmed, not ended, because in politics one should not predict any end. Because in this same Delhi, the BJP, which has now come to power, had lost many elections after 1993.

BJP workers, leaders and supporters will be very happy, but along with the BJP, the Congress will also be happy with the defeat of the AAP. As will be those who are seen standing with different political parties as alternatives to the BJP. This is the first victory of the BJP that will also satisfy those who wished to defeat it in the past.

This victory in Delhi did not come easily for the BJP. It had to throw in all its strength to achieve it. It should be remembered that in 2008, the Congress’s vote share was more than 40%, but at present its vote share did not even hit the double digits. The BJP’s vote share in 2013 was more than 33%. Its base remained strong even then, but it got fewer seats.

Lessons from past elections

From 2015 to this election, the BJP’s vote share has also been increasing. Is the defeat of the AAP only a defeat due to dissatisfaction with the government’s work? The role of government work is always there. The public certainly evaluates it, but we should also look at what other reasons there could be for the AAP’s defeat. Did ideology also play a role? Let me examine this question later.

The BJP is making a comeback in Delhi after 27 years. This is a big political moment for the party. In 2014, there was a Modi wave, and during that wave, when the assembly elections were held in 2015, the people of Delhi did not choose the BJP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s performance was excellent, but in the 2020 assembly elections, the people of Delhi once again did not choose the saffron party.

Although the AAP defeated the BJP in Delhi in an era when no one could stand against Modi, the BJP despite winning the elections in 2025 has not defeated the AAP in the same way.

In 2015, the BJP won three seats in Delhi and in 2020 it won eight seats. Compared to 2020, the BJP’s vote percentage has increased by 7%, and the AAP’s has decreased by about 10%.

What is noteworthy is that Kejriwal’s party lost this election even as Modi may have been weakened in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

After 2013, for the first time there will be a government of the same party in both the Centre and the state in Delhi. Before this, during the UPA era, there was a government of the same party in the Centre and Delhi. Now it will be the BJP’s.

The BJP has won all categories of seats in Delhi. In the 2013 election in Delhi, the BJP got 33% of the vote. In 2015, there was a slight decline, but even then, about one-third of the votes remained with the BJP. In 2020, the BJP’s vote percentage increased to more than 38%.

Arvind Kejriwal personally lost the election. He lost from the New Delhi seat, from which he had created a sensation by defeating three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit. He lost to the BJP’s Parvesh Verma. The Congress’s Sandeep Dikshit got only around 4,500 votes.

So, it would not be correct to surmise that the Congress defeated Kejriwal. Parvesh Verma has defeated Kejriwal.

Manish Sisodia also lost, as did Saurabh Bhardwaj and Satyendra Jain. There is more discussion about the losers than the winners, because the BJP could not win against them in many attempts. Delhi’s chief minister Atishi has won the election, but now her victory has no meaning.

The AAP had anticipated defeat even before the election. Kejriwal, as soon as he came out of jail, resigned from his post and appointed Atishi the chief minister so that he could focus on ensuring that the AAP gets re-elected. Despite this, Kejriwal could not make his party win and could not even save his own seat.

Dissatisfaction among public against AAP and questions about sudden increase in voters

The AAP will also have to think about whether Kejriwal’s decision to leave the chief minister’s post was right. It will also have to think about why Atishi did not connect with the people of Delhi, or what would have happened if someone else had been made the chief minister. The third question is that tickets of more than 20 MLAs were changed, which shows that the AAP had sensed public dissatisfaction.

The BJP also replaces its sitting MLAs and MPs a lot during elections, and has benefited from it, but the AAP’s cutting or changing its MLAs’ tickets did not prove successful.

Obviously, there wasn’t as much dissatisfaction among the public regarding the MLAs as there was regarding the party and the government’s work.

Also Read: BJP Trounces AAP in Delhi As Sharp Class Divisions Come to The Fore

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has said that this result is less of a BJP victory and more of Kejriwal’s defeat. People have defeated him out of frustration.

Regarding the results of February 8, there is only talk of defeat and victory. It’s natural, too. In this election, the question is not why the AAP lost. The question is also how it was defeated. How were persuasion, force, money and division used to defeat it, and what was the role of the Election Commission?

On this day, in the studios of godi media, these things are completely ignored, and the election is analysed by just telling the numbers as if nothing else happened in the election except voting.

The AAP raised many serious questions regarding the voter list, the answers to which have not come yet. Even today, Himanshi Dahiya’s report in The Quint shows that while there was an increase of four lakh voters in Delhi between the 2020 assembly elections and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, four lakh new voters were added in just the seven months before Wednesday’s assembly elections.

Himanshi’s report also points to a change in the New Delhi seat. The report says that in the New Delhi assembly constituency, the total vote has decreased by 27% in five years.

Between 2020 and 2025, where did more than 37,000 voters from this seat – from where Kejriwal had won the last election by 21,000 voters – go? The decrease in the number of voters here is greater than his victory margin in 2020.

Rahul Gandhi said in his press conference on February 7 that in Maharashtra, 40 lakh new voters were added in the five months between the Lok Sabha and assembly elections, while it previously took five years to add so many voters.

These questions will remain, and answers should come from the Election Commission.

Now, coming to the question of ideology. Did the AAP fight an ideological battle on the ground in Delhi against the BJP in these 12 years? Of course, AAP leaders went to jail, the chief minister went to jail, the deputy chief minister went to jail, and many other leaders had to go to jail. Running the government was never easy for the AAP. Cases were filed against MLAs from time to time, raids were conducted on their houses and offices, and many left the party and joined the BJP.

It is being said now that the AAP will break up. This is not a big deal. When the AAP was winning, it was breaking up and being broken up. The AAP also removed Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the party, but even then, Yadav and Bhushan opposed the raids and arrests because of principles.

AAP’s ideological dilemma and the RSS

All this happened, but the doubt that had arisen in the political discussion and in the minds of a large section of voters was not removed. They began to see the AAP as an organisation that came out of the shadow of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and kept running.

In the beginning, even those people who wanted a new political stream in the country did not care about this. But since 2014, the question of the RSS has become more pronounced, especially when Rahul Gandhi started directly attacking the RSS during and after the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Until then, it was said about the Congress that there were leaders in the party who supported the RSS and could join the BJP at any time.

But Rahul started attacking the RSS explicitly. The picture became clear for the Congress when Rahul understands that the attack on institutions is not only administrative but ideological, and it is also a question of an ideological battle. Rahul then started targeting the RSS.

The Congress never openly named the RSS like this; rather, the biggest expansion of the RSS happened during the Congress era. Rahul knew that his party did not have the organisation to fight the RSS, nor did it have leaders. On the contrary, his party would break up or scatter because many leaders of his party wanted to walk on some other form of Hindutva.

In such a situation, Rahul drew his line that not only the BJP but the RSS is also the enemy of Congress.

Whether Rahul will ever be able to win by fighting the RSS is a different question, but he has announced the fight against the RSS. At least in speeches, he speaks clearly by naming the RSS.

But during this time, Kejriwal was writing letters to Mohan Bhagwat, appealing on some issues. Whether Kejriwal was fighting the RSS or not, the question about the role of the RSS behind the rise of his party, especially in the Anna movement, remains unanswered.

For many years, this question was forgotten, but this time it was foregrounded again. The AAP did not pay attention to the discussion around it. The support it had also developed cracks due to this reason.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, propaganda was run regarding the Tablighi Jamaat. There was a lot of propaganda. The number of how many Tablighis were among COVID-19 patients started being reported separately. Kejriwal himself reiterated this. People remembered this, and Sisodia lost from Jangpura because the Tablighi Jamaat’s centre, called the Markaz, is in that area.

Did the AAP’s strategy of remaining silent during the Delhi riots backfire?

Not only this, doubts also remained for a long time regarding the role of the AAP during the Delhi riots. The AAP or its leaders never openly raised their voice for the arrested people. This resulted in the section that considered the AAP a better contender than the Congress for defeating the BJP becoming indifferent and starting to distance itself because in these ten years, politics has dramatically changed in the country.

The AAP itself stopped taking the name of Lokpal. For ten whole years, the AAP kept fighting with the BJP and also endured the BJP’s attacks, but even then it was not successful in removing this charge. But now, it should say what the role of the RSS behind its movement was and what was the role of the Vivekananda Foundation. How does it view the Sangh and how will it view it in the future?

I have seen many people – who understand the dangers of putting a chief minister in jail and taking away the rights of a government – writing and asking about this. The danger to democracy is a very big peril for these people.

Even then, those people could not believe in the AAP, and this time they became silent or started speaking against it. These people were neither speaking in favour of the Congress nor speaking in favour of the BJP, but became silent about the AAP.

The support that was received by the AAP in two elections was not received by the party this time. The BJP attacked the AAP mercilessly, and the AAP also responded in equal measure. The party broke but also survived.

The question that is arises why the AAP could not prepare the ground of ideology in Delhi. Isn’t it a big thing that after so many attacks, this party that should have been wiped out by now has remained? Even after losing, it has become the main opposition party in Delhi.

The question is different. The question is whether the AAP was wrong to consider Delhi’s voter only as a Hindu voter, only as a BJP voter.

Most voters in India are Hindu anyway. I mean understanding them as a voter of the BJP’s Hindutva. Couldn’t Kejriwal see that in Delhi, those people who vote for him want to defeat the BJP? Kejriwal felt that Delhi’s voter is one in political temperament. During the day he votes for the BJP, in the afternoon for the AAP. But the BJP never saw and accepted this formulation.

Kejriwal started following BJP’s playbook

The BJP never let the AAP breathe in peace in the political field, and the result was that while fighting, Kejriwal also started doing what the BJP used to do. His language changed and his political programmes changed.

He started organising pilgrimages, started doing aarti and made Bajrangbali the presiding deity of his party. In the last election, he even said that on the first Tuesday of every month, the government will organise the reading of the Sunder Kand in all assembly constituencies, and that it will organise Hanuman Chalisa recitals.

One is not sure how much of this happened on the ground. At the time of the Ram Mandir inauguration on the site of the demolished Babri Masjid, he promised that the government will organise recitation of the Sunder Kand in every assembly constituency, and they did it too.

The AAP understood Delhi’s voters only to this extent, and in front of Delhi’s voters, it appeared to be presenting those issues wrapped in the flag of a different colour, whose biggest marketing manager is Narendra Modi. The result was that it never became clear to Delhi’s voters what the difference between the AAP and BJP is.

The Congress also understood India’s politics in this way since 2014. Rahul Gandhi also went to the Kedarnath temple, displayed the picture of Lord Shiva in the Lok Sabha and speaks about the Abhay mudra. But his form now is quite different from his form when he had started making rounds of temples after 2014.

The BJP started attacking him, alleging that he was an opportunist, becoming Hindu at the last moment. Rahul understood this and changed his method. Kejriwal remained aggressive in this area, but if there is benefit from the fog, there is also loss from it. The AAP never gave its clarification on these questions. Political parties often want to let the confusion remain.

The AAP must have felt that given the attack its leaders have been under – that they went to jail and the rights of the government were taken away – the public would understand that it is not the B-team of the RSS or the BJP.

In August 2022, opposition leaders were going to jail and during this time, there was a raid on Sisodia’s house. RJD leader Manoj Jha gave a statement and said that ‘what I have been telling you always about the CBI and ED, that these institutions have lost their character, their direction is determined, and we all know where it is determined from, why it is determined and what are its implications’.

‘But what is important is that the AAP will also have to decide that when raids are conducted on other opposition leaders, you should also learn to speak. Today we are speaking for you, but when it happens to others, you remain silent’, Jha added.

In this way, no one will gain anything from one-sided thinking. We all must give a message that a political battle should be fought politically – this was the message. Whether the AAP understood Jha’s words, only it would know, but due to confusion in the AAP’s stance for a long time, Jha must have given this statement.

INDIA bloc and AAP’s battles with Congress

Rahul displayed his commitment too. In the same Ramlila Maidan where the Anna movement picked up pace and the Congress’s government was uprooted not only from Delhi but from the whole country, in that same Ramlila Maidan, after Kejriwal’s arrest, the INDIA bloc rally was being held at the time of the Lok Sabha elections and Rahul was present.

Two chairs were left empty on that stage, one for Kejriwal and one for Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren. At that time both leaders were in jail. Rahul always spoke out on Kejriwal’s arrest and attacked the Modi government. Was Kejriwal doing the same? There’s no time to answer that now; a separate piece is needed to explore that subject.

Like any party, the AAP has every right to expand politically. But in this process of expansion, it’s up to the voters and political commentators to see who benefits and who loses. There’s talk of the INDIA bloc breaking up, but given how the interests of the two major parties in this alliance were clashing, was it possible for the friendship to continue? Even in 2013, when Kejriwal defeated the Congress for the first time, Congress had supported the AAP government.

After that, not only in Delhi but in many states, both contested elections against each other and caused damage. It began to be said about the the AAP that it goes to other states to defeat the Congress. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the AAP and Congress fought the election together, but before the assembly elections, Kejriwal announced 70 candidates on its own. Clearly, there was no scope left for an alliance.

The INDIA bloc should not be seen merely as an alliance of parties. At the core, at the foundation of this alliance, there is a question of ideology, and that question is completely different from the RSS and BJP. If you don’t look at this alliance from the perspective of ideology, from the perspective of clarity in ideology, then you are not looking at the INDIA bloc completely.

Sometimes, leaders try to avoid ideology in the name of the politics of work. Leaders of every party do this. But if Kejriwal had created a separate ideological ground in Delhi, it would have been a different matter. Political thinkers will ponder this question and give better answers than me. But the question is, did Kejriwal understand Delhi’s public correctly? If he had understood Delhi’s voters, would the results have been different? It’s difficult to say.

It is true that the BJP’s base in Delhi has remained quite strong. Even then, it couldn’t defeat Sheila Dikshit three times. If the BJP’s base in Delhi was so large, then why couldn’t it defeat Sheila Dikshit? No one has an answer to this. Why couldn’t they defeat the AAP in 2015? The BJP was easily defeated by a newly formed party.

But this time, Kejriwal didn’t appear as smart as he did during the Lok Sabha elections when, immediately after coming out of jail, he made sensational statements about Yogi and Modi, forcing the BJP on the defensive and to declare that Modi would remain prime minister after 2024.

Kejriwal’s mistakes became BJP’s gains

This time, Kejriwal made several mistakes. The BJP took advantage of his frivolous statement about poisoning the Yamuna River. Calling the BJP a “goon party” and a party of “abusive language” did not work. On the other hand, the BJP announced the eighth Pay Commission and talking about depositing Rs 2,500 in women’s accounts. The BJP did not project anyone as the chief ministerial face, yet it won Delhi.

The people of Delhi wanted to give a chance to a new political experiment. They gave ten years to that new experiment called the AAP. The people of Delhi also gave a chance to the AAP in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), but the cleanliness situation in the city did not improve. Work became an issue in Delhi, and Kejriwal could not explain why this situation had arisen.

The rights of the Delhi government were taken away, the administration was run by the lieutenant governor, there were obstacles in the MCD, the AAP government could not work, and the chief minister and ministers were put in jail. The BJP put in all its strength to ensure that the government failed.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu campaigned in Shahdara. Why did a Telugu-speaking leader go to Shahdara? In Burari, all the leaders of Janata Dal (United) came from Bihar to campaign. It is a different matter that Sanjeev Jha of the AAP won the election from Burari.

Why did the AAP, which used to surprise the BJP every time with its strategy and technique, fall behind the BJP this time? The party itself will have to introspect and arrive at answers.

Kejriwal’s biggest strength was ethics, his honesty. His image was not damaged as much by his going to jail as it was by the “sheesh mahal” (glass palace) campaign. Every chief minister’s house might be like this; who knows, even in Delhi many Union ministers’ houses might be even grander. But the BJP succeeded in making it an issue against Kejriwal. The BJP was able to breed suspicion about his image of a simple and honest leader. Even in parliamentary speeches, the prime minister kept talking about a “sheesh mahal”.

Also Read: AAP’s Unwillingness to Go with Congress May Have Cost them Delhi

The BJP’s victory in Delhi is very significant, but the Congress should not assume that the AAP’s defeat will make its path easier in Delhi. This phase of Indian politics will not change with just one or two elections. The AAP should understand that its defeat is due to the Congress, but it should also explain what Congress should have done. Where the Congress contests elections, should the AAP have contested as well?

Major leaders of the AAP have lost by margins that equal the votes that Congress candidates have received. But similarly, in Gujarat, Haryana or anywhere else, the AAP can be shown to have caused the defeat of Congress candidates. Victory and defeat cannot be reduced to just these arithmetical factors.

Think about those leaders who are born in the Congress, then move to the AAP and then leave to join the BJP. How well they must understand politics!

They comprehend it so well that they might say, “Let these scholars do the analysis. What is ideology? What is the issue? What is the constitution? Our purpose is to change parties at the right time, sometimes become an MLA from this party, sometimes from that party.”