New Delhi: The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA, has reasons to celebrate its electoral performance nationally, but it faced a setback in the national capital. In Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won all the seven parliamentary seats, despite the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress joining hands.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Leaders of the AAP and the Congress broadly cite two reasons behind their unsuccessful campaign in Delhi. First, there was a lack of coordination among party workers at the local level. Second, their inability to convince voters that the two parties which have been political opponents for more than a decade now were actually supporting one another in a larger fight against the BJP.
Delhi went to polls on May 25. The AAP contested four of the seven seats and the Congress contested the remaining three.
In the last two general elections too, the BJP had won all the seven seats in Delhi. The Election Commission records show that in the last 35 years BJP had only failed to win a majority of Delhi’s parliamentary seats twice — in 2004 and 2009. On both those occasions, the saffron party also lost overall at the national level.
The AAP-Congress alliance had its advantages in Delhi, said a senior AAP leader. “The Opposition votes, especially in Muslim pockets, would no longer split. Also, both parties could club their resources and put up a better campaign.”
The candidates were strong. AAP’s Somnath Bharti is a popular face in the New Delhi parliamentary segment, as is Mahabal Mishra, who used to be a Congress strongman in West Delhi and later joined the AAP. Congress’s candidate JP Aggarwal has been a Lok Sabha member thrice (twice from the Chandni Chowk seat which he unsuccessfully contested this year) and Rajya Sabha member once, and Kanhaiya Kumar, the northeast Delhi candidate, is a known name across the country from his university politics days.
But these advantages did not materialise into a favourable electoral outcome. The best that the alliance could do was bring down the BJP’s vote share in Delhi from nearly 57% in 2019 to 54.4% this year.
Where did the Opposition fail?
“To understand this failure, one has to see the brief history of AAP and Congress in Delhi,” said a senior Delhi-based Congress leader. “AAP is the force which is responsible for wiping out Congress from the Delhi assembly. Attempts to convince Congress workers to work with AAP volunteers led to some sort of existential crisis among them (Congress workers).”
The AAP won 67 and 62 seats out of 70 in the Delhi assembly in the 2015 and 2020 elections, respectively, and the BJP won the rest. In both these years, the Congress party, which ruled Delhi for 15 consecutive years starting 1998 under Sheila Dikshit, drew a nil.
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Mid-rung leaders in both AAP and Congress told The Wire that volunteers and party workers in Delhi faced a difficult time in convincing people that they were supporting candidates fielded by one another under a seat-sharing arrangement. The two parties were widely perceived as opponents. The perception deepened when disagreements within the Delhi unit of Congress regarding the alliance became public. A group of Congress leaders were in support of going solo. Some of them, such as Sandeep Dikshit, continued criticising Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal even after his party formally announced an alliance with the AAP in Delhi.
Weeks before Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, Congress’s former Delhi unit president Arvinder Singh Lovely had quit, citing dissatisfaction over the party high command giving tickets to “outsiders” – indirectly training guns as candidates Udit Raj and Kanhaiya Kumar. Lovely later joined the BJP.
Also, party workers were not too accommodative of one another. For instance, in constituencies where the AAP had fielded candidates, local AAP volunteers would be less inclined to work with Congress workers. The same coordination problem was witnessed in constituencies where the Congress fielded candidates, said sources in both the parties.
“While welcoming the decision of the people of Delhi, we as an organization need to reflect on how we can live up to the expectations of the people in the future. We will always be ready to serve the public and will continue to work on our weak links,” said Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Devender Yadav.
AAP’s Delhi convener Gopal Rai said, “We contested the polls under adverse circumstances. In Delhi, we gave a strong fight to the BJP.”
The BJP on its part replaced six of its sitting members of parliament from Delhi to fight anti-incumbency highlighted by the party’s internal surveys.
“There was definitely a coordination problem at the ground level,” said Tanvir Aeijaz, associate professor in the department of political science at Ramjas College in the University of Delhi.
He further said, “In Congress’s case, they got involved in factional fights. Delhi Congress needs to recalibrate and strengthen themselves. It has lacked a strong leadership after Sheila Dikshit [who died in 2019]. In AAP’s case, they seem to be in disarray because of pressure from central agencies. Their top leaders are either in jail or fear getting jailed.”
Challenging circumstances
Weeks before the seven-phased general elections started, Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case linked to the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy 2021.
His former deputy, Manish Sisodia, is still in jail in connection with the same case. Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh was also arrested but he is currently out on bail. Also, senior AAP leader Satyendar Jain continues to be in prison after being arrested by the ED in connection with a separate case two years ago.
AAP’s internal surveys showed that Kejriwal’s arrest had a positive impact on its campaign and a “sympathy element” boosted the party’s popularity by 3% in the national capital, The Wire has learnt. That’s when Kejriwal decided to bring his wife Sunita into the picture. But the sympathy factor started waning by mid-April when the prime minister launched a tirade against Muslims in his campaign speeches. The AAP’s internal surveys suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s communal pitch had started to sway voters. And then Kejriwal’s temporary release came as a boon for the party.
The Supreme Court on May 10 granted interim bail to Kejriwal for election campaigns. Adhering to the bail conditions, Kejriwal surrendered and went back to jail on June 2.
But, in the 21 days, he participated in back-to-back campaigning for AAP’s candidates and several INDIA bloc partners across states. Kejriwal’s participation was expected to benefit the AAP and help it win Lok Sabha seats in Delhi – something that the political party has failed to accomplish in its 12-year journey so far.
But it did not yield the expected outcome.
“One should see this [general election result] as a referendum against Narendra Modi,” said AAP’s Rajya Sabha member and general secretary (organisation) Sandeep Pathak. “Arvind Kejriwal’s popularity will be tested in the assembly elections next year.”
He further said, “This was a fight between BJP and INDIA. And voters across the country have given the BJP a befitting response… In Delhi’s case, it follows a specific pattern. A large chunk of people vote for BJP in the general elections but they vote for AAP in assembly elections. It seems like people chose to stick to the same pattern.”
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Also, days before Delhi went to polls, the AAP faced another controversy. Its Rajya Sabha member Swati Maliwal, who went to meet Kejriwal at his residence in Civil Lines, alleged that she was assaulted by the chief minister’s personal assistant Bibhav Kumar. While AAP alleged that this was a “BJP conspiracy”, Kumar was arrested by the police.
The bigger question
But the bigger question is: What happens next year when Delhi goes to the assembly polls?
The past two election cycles have shown that Delhi indeed votes differently in different elections, as Pathak mentioned.
While the BJP won all the seven seats in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, the AAP came to power in the Delhi assembly with a whopping majority both in 2015 and 2020 state polls. The Delhi assembly polls happen around nine months after Lok Sabha polls.
There is a significant population in Delhi who seem to go with BJP in the general elections but vote for the AAP in the assembly polls. Political observers suggest that around one-fourth of Delhi’s total voting population follows this pattern.
Delhi has more than 1.5 crore voters, of which 58.7% exercised their franchise this year, according to the Election Commission data.
There is also doubt over whether the AAP and the Congress would remain allies in the Delhi assembly polls next year. Kejriwal said in a recent interview that the partnership between the two parties is meant to fight the BJP nationally and it is “not permanent” in nature. Congress leaders say that the decision on that would be taken by the party’s high command.
Aeijaz calls it a “tough call” at this point. “Overall, the opposition seems stronger nationally. But we do not know if AAP would ally with Congress for the assembly polls. And, if Kejriwal comes out of jail, it can be a gamechanger.”
Abhishek Dey is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. He writes on politics.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
