With a basic ballpoint in his pocket, muffler around his neck, baggy sweater and blue Wagon R, Arvind Kejriwal was the archetypal common man when he came into the public domain. And when he used the descriptive to actually name his party after the “aam aadmi”, people were drawn to it in droves.
That was 2013. Twelve years later, that dream of being a pan-India party and a national level leader is beginning to come undone for the bureaucrat-activist who chose to become a politician – not by joining an established party but starting his own from ground up.
The Aam Aadmi Party, which ruled Delhi for 10 successive years and also formed government in Punjab, on Saturday lost the election in India’s capital city with 22 seats against the BJP’s 48.
Not just that, Kejriwal lost his own seat New Delhi to the BJP’s Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma. It was an ignominious end to the Kejriwal era in Delhi, putting a question mark on the future of the party. And on that of its national convenor.
With only Punjab in his pocket, the 56-year-old’s national hopes for himself and his party have been arrested – at least for the moment.
Notwithstanding the loss in Delhi, where many of his senior leaders, including his deputy Manish Sisodia also bit the dust, the AAP is still a player. It has 13 MPs from Punjab and Delhi — 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, seven from Punjab and three from Delhi, and three Lok Sabha MPs from Punjab.
The IIT-Kharagpur graduate and Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer from Haryana first entered electoral politics in 2013, storming the Congress bastion by defeating three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit. Holding out the promise of freshness in his politics, that was when he became chief minister for the first time by wresting the national capital from established political parties.
On February 14, 2014, just 49 days after he became Delhi chief minister for the first time, he quit in a blaze of headlines after alliance partner Congress opposed his pet project, the Jan Lokpal Bill. In the elections that followed in 2015, the AAP won 67 of 70 seats. Five years later, it bagged 62.
In 2024, he resigned for the second time when he was jailed over allegations of corruption in the excise scam and said the people of Delhi will give him a certificate of honesty in the assembly polls.
That has not happened.
Relentless attacks from the BJP over allegations of the ‘aam aadmi’ chief minister spending crores on redoing the official residence, the liquor scam, the continuing woes of Delhiites dealing with poor civic facilities in a hopelessly polluted city did their damage.
Against this onslaught, the fact that Kejriwal was incarcerated in the excise policy case as was his deputy Sisodia (and fellow minister Satyendar Jain in a money laundering case) did not find the emotional resonance the party was hoping for.
And so the gains from the promise of mohalla clinics, model government schools, water and electricity just frittered away.
After quitting his career as an income tax officer job in 2000, Kejriwal worked as an RTI activist and lived in slums of Delhi, apparently to understand the problems faced by people living there till 2010. In 2011, he joined Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.
Among the first public memories that stay are of Kejriwal on an indefinite hunger strike as part of the 'India Against Corruption' movement along with Hazare. Then of him sleeping in his blue Wagon R in bone chilling Delhi winter nights as the newbie chief minister protested over the Jan Lokpal bill.
Those images quickly segued into Kejriwal, the leader of national level promise who emerged along with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, as the one who successfully thwarted the BJP's plans of unseating the ruling AAP in Delhi with the full force of Modi factor and resources.
None of it sat pretty with the BJP’s ‘sheesh mahal’ jibe over the luxe CM's residence.
The three-time chief minister’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in the excise policy linked money laundering case in March 2024 was a setback for the party's leadership.
He stepped down and made senior leader Atishi the chief minister instead. She even kept a pair of ‘khadaus’ in a chair, reminiscent of the Maharbharat, to indicate that the chief minister’s chair would wait for him.
The party seemed to bounce back with Kejriwal coming out of jail in September last year and firmly holding the reins of the AAP ahead of the polls.
The idea was that the AAP would come to power in the elections. But it came to nought.
The ambitious plans for Delhi's development seemed increasingly unachievable, and the promises of a corruption-free administration began to falter under the weight of political pressures.
Pugnacious as always, Kejriwal and his party put up a spirited fight against the BJP’s ‘sheesh mahal’ charges and that he ran a party that was an "AAPda" (disaster) for the city.
Kejriwal’s poison in Yamuna tack did not work. Nor did his argument that the AAP could not do any work because it was stopped from doing so by the LG.
Even the promise of freebies, including Rs 2,100 a month for women and increased pension, if the AAP returns to power did not impress.
And so Kejriwal withdraws from the capital’s centrestage right now. Perhaps to spend more time with his family – daughter, son, wife and elderly parents who were seen on polling day in wheelchairs. And no doubt to strategise on the future of the party and draw a national level roadmap.
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