Arrogance Sunk Kejriwal's Boat in Delhi

The Aam Aadmi Party AAP) is stunned. BJP is pleasantly surprised. AAP voters are shocked and their sympathisers sad. And the party’s National Convener Arvind Kejriwal is musing reclusely what went wrong.

Some attribute his own and that of his party defeat to BJP charges of splurging on the renovation of his official bungalow into a “Sheesh Mahal” and himself and his ministers making away with public money. But above all, Kejriwal lost to the loss of his image as a crusader against corruption and desertion of the anti-corruption agenda on the wave of which he had rode to power in Delhi.

His former colleague Kumar Vishwas very aptly describes his double losses, “Arrogance is the food for the god.” He was acting like Mahabharat’s Duryodhan, adamant on sharing nothing with those who had fought along with him to give the country a new political culture, he adds.

His another former colleague Yogender Yadav said that the AAP had evolved into a temple and people in early days gravitated towards it with respect and a lot of expectations but over the years it converted into a shop. He also describes Kejriwal as a wily and clever person and a strategist and hopes that he would think out a way out of the defeat to put the party on the tracks.

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan and a member of AAP’s erstwhile quintet --Kejriwal, Yogender Yadav, Kumar Vishwas, Manish Sisodia and Prashant– holds Kejriwal majorly responsible for the defeat, saying that Kejriwal converted a party known for an alternative politics, transparency and democratic values into a Supremo-controlled and corrupt party. He started moving around in luxury cars and got his bungalow renovated into a plush palace at whooping costs.

Another factor which led to his decimation from 60 seats to just 22 was his change of course from being a democrat to an autocrat. He started behaving like a sole redeemer to rid Delhi of all the dirt which had accumulated over the years during the BJP's five years and the Congress's 15 years rule.

People believed his dream and the media helped him sell it. The market for his wares was also conducive for it, with the loot charges in preparation of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in 2010 and the 2G spectrum allocation the Coal Block scams running fast and thick. The scene on the power front was depressing, with frequent outages and alleged inflated bills.

His descent into an autocrat-democrat began when he exited his core group members Yogender Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, whose father late Shanti Bhushan had contributed Rs one crore to the party fund when it was in its infancy and short of money, from the party's national council and later from the party, announcing a la dictator that either they would be in the body or Yadav and Prashant , and the herd nodded their heads to the herder dictates.

The two had during the run up to the 2015 Assembly election had objected to nominating candidates with dubious backgrounds. Not only that, Kejriwal also removed AAP’s internal Lokpal Admiral (retd.) L. Ramdas, tasked with the responsibility to filter out controversial candidates, in an unceremonious way: he was not informed of the party’s decision to remove. He got to know about it from a reporter which was later confirmed in the media report, he had sadly said at that time.

Irrespective of the percentage of votes the two parties got (BJP-47.2 against AAP’s 43.6,), the AAP’s defeat is a big phenomenon. Instead of marching ahead into other states, it will now find itself bound in Delhi.

AAP’s moral degradation is not a big deal if it is measured by the political moral standards in the country. What shocked and surprised people was his breaking with the moral benchmarks which he had set for himself.

What people could not make out of was his change of colours. It seemed very mysterious to his workers and supporters that a man coming from a well-off middle-class family as he does- the couple were Income Tax Commissioners before Kejriwal joined politics– so soon could shun his political morality and started behaving like an upstart.

There were no class vulnerabilities for him to get enamoured of a life of luxuries, even if we assess him on this highly biased parameter. Among others, another likely factor for his defeat could be that his personal desires got the better of his spirit to fight for the masses to give them a new political order which took the sheen off his agenda to marry politics and morality, so far given short shrift by the political parties.

He lost the thymos (spiritedness) as great Greek philosopher Plato said in his famous treatise the Republic for the worth that he had set upon himself and the people who had gathered around him. He strayed into the rutted politics to aggrandise his political empire by hook or crook, and the kick of power convinced him of the crass dictum that everything is fair in war and love, for him politics.

Otherwise, why would one start practicing soft Hindutva politics when his or her political agenda is to fight political corruption and communalism? His apathetic role in the 2020 North-East Delhi communal riots exposed his hollowness to fight against the communal politics in the country. 

You cannot sail in two boats at the same time. If you do it, you cannot keep your whole intact for long. And he did lose his image among the Muslim minority. Yet, they are with them as they have no alternative to shield themselves against the communal currents sweeping the country.

What explains his infirm stand on communalism is his failure to keep religious prejudices aside in politics. Also, he felt political ideology and electoral politics cannot be made compatible. Of course, it is very difficult to dovetail ideology into realpolitik to reconcile the dichotomies. That he failed to do.

But the game is not up for him and the party. Prospects for AAP’s revival are embers in the ashes of the Delhi election results. AAP’s defeat is marginal by just two percentage of votes. Though seat-wise, the BJP victory was sweeping and phenomenal, winning two-thirds of majority. And the win was thorough. But many seats it won with thin margins.

Political analysts say that AAP’s loss is the dashing of hopes for an alternative politics in the country, as also former AAP founder Yogender Yadav feels. He says that everybody should feel sad over it. Of course, credit must go to Kejriwal for giving the country a new blueprint for doing politics but it was he who left it in the lurch. Also, it is he and his team who has to rise like Phoenix from the defeat and stand the party once again with its core values along with old and new warriors.

A few words on the Congress rejoicing over Kejriwal’s defeat. The party's joy does not bode well for its agenda to save the Constitution and secularism unitedly. Fight among yourself to your satisfaction, and finish off each other,” that is how J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah commented on the defeat of AAP in Delhi and how the fight between AAP and Congress gave the crown to BJP.

Congress fired on all cylinders to see AAP defeated. Congress expressly enjoyed AAP’s defeat and over taking revenge against it for marring its chances in Haryana Assembly election. Congress had missed power by a whisker in Haryana. Though it drew a blank in Delhi, it ensured that AAP met the same fate in Delhi as it did in the neighbouring state

Had Congress and AAP contested together, the latter’s vote share would have been more than 3% of that of the BJP, and thus would have defeated the saffron party.

 Congress played spoilspot in 14 constituencies for the AAP. In these constituencies, Congress candidates polled more votes than the margins by which AAP nominees lost to BJP. Thus, hypothetically, AAP and the Congress in alliance could have secured 36 seats – just enough for a majority in the assembly.

 In the Muslim-concentrated constituency, Mustafabad,  AAP candidate lost to BJP by about 17,500 votes, while the AIMIM and Congress candidates polled over 33,400 and 11,700 votes respectively. Except for this constituency, AAP candidates were winners in the other six Muslim-concentrated constituencies. But it failed to sweep the 12 reserved constituencies as it did earlier, conceding four to  BJP.

• BJP performed best in the constituencies where the city’s rich are in considerable numbers, securing 52.6% of votes.

• AAP’s vote share on seats with over 25% Muslim voters declined by 12.3 points, in comparison to 2020.

• City's poorest also voted less for AAP this time; it saw erosion of 8.2 points of their votes.

• BJP and AAP shared equally the six seats in the North-East Lok Sabha constituency, which had witnessed communal riots in 2020.

• Assiuddin Owaisi party AIMIM failed to open an account, but performed better than Congress in constituencies having considerable Muslim voters– Mustafabad and Okhla– which it contested.

• The Left combine which together contested on six seats polled less votes than NOTA.  

• 5, 627 voters pushed the NOTA button, while the Left parties together got just 2,158 votes in all the six constituencies put together.

Prominent Winners	Atishi (AAP)	Gopal Roy (AAP)	Parvesh Verma (BIP)	Vijender Gupta (BJP)	Shikha Roy (BJP)
Prominent Losers	Arvind Kejriwal (AAP)	Manish Sisodia (AAP)	Saurabh Bhardwaj(AAP)	Somnath Bharti (AAP)	Ramesh Bidhuri (BJP)