AAP looks to usurp Congress' space on Narendra Modi's home turf

AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal (File image)

Soon after an impressive roadshow by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann in Ahmedabad on April 2, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) claimed that an internal survey was giving it 58 of the 182 seats in Gujarat if assembly elections were held then.

It is too early to predict the outcome as assembly elections in Gujarat are due in November-December, but AAP is cleverly following a well-crafted strategy by playing mind games with its opponents.

Making abundantly clear that it means business, Kejriwal's party has managed to create an initial buzz in the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, especially after its landslide victory in the recent Punjab assembly elections.

The challenge for AAP will be to sustain this momentum till the elections in Gujarat.

Gujarat has for years witnessed bipolar elections between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. The BJP is ruling the state for 27 years since 1998. Chhabildas Mehta (late) was the last Congress leader to become Chief Minister, in 1995.

In the 2017 assembly elections, the Congress not only significantly increased its tally and vote share, but also for the first time in 22 years restricted the BJP below the three-digit figure in the 182-member assembly.

The Congress won 77 seats with a vote share of 41.4 percent while the BJP bagged 99 seats and secured 49.1 percent of the votes polled. The credit for the improved show of the Congress was given to Rahul Gandhi who during his 22 days of campaigning addressed nearly 150 rallies and corner meetings.

The grand old party did well in Saurashtra and north Gujarat, but its organisational weaknesses gave a clear edge to the BJP across the state. It was so bad that the Congress had to hire people for booth-level management in almost all the 182 constituencies.

Aware of these shortcomings of the Congress, AAP will try to usurp the grand old party’s space in Gujarat’s political landscape, while pitching itself as the main challenger to the BJP.

After the Punjab victory, AAP has been projecting itself as a credible alternative to a much-weakened and crisis-ridden Congress.

For AAP, the Congress is a soft target as compared to the BJP, which boasts of a formidable election machinery.

Kejriwal often claims that his party's nationalist agenda and governance model in Delhi, especially in health and education sectors, surpasses the BJP’s time-tested and successful planks of Hindutva and nationalism.

Besides, the anti-corruption party is also buoyed by its performance in last year’s Surat civic polls in which it emerged as the main opposition with the Congress drawing a blank.

The outcome should have sounded alarm bells in the Congress but it is struggling to revive its organisation at the grassroots in the state where it has been out of power for nearly 27 years now.

Post-2017, the Congress has also failed to keep its flock together, as it lost 12 legislators to the BJP. Its current tally stands at 65 while the BJP has 111 legislators.

As the elections are fast approaching, the party is still debating whether to take the services of poll strategist Prashant Kishor. There is also no clarity yet on the joining of industrialist and powerful Leuva Patidar leader Naresh Patel — who is being wooed by the BJP and the AAP too.

With Kejriwal holding a hugely successful roadshow, the Congress has also failed to seize the first-mover advantage.

But the importance of Gujarat in the BJP's electoral scheme of things could be gauged by the fact that a day after winning four states (Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, and Uttarakhand), Prime Minister Modi was in Gujarat at a political rally.

For the BJP, it doesn't matter who is the Chief Minister because the face of the party will always remain Modi, who governed the state for 12 years from October 2001 till May 2014.

That's the reason there wasn't any opposition from within the BJP when first-time legislator Bhupendra Patel was named Vijay Rupani's replacement as chief Minister in September. What worked in Bhupendra Patel's favour was that he belonged to the influential Patidar community, and was a staunch loyalist of former Chief Minister and now Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel.

The results of the Gujarat elections will have an impact on other states, and even the 2024 general elections.

The zeal shown by the BJP and AAP is missing when it comes to the Congress, where the leadership is struggling to put its house in order. Rahul Gandhi, who had in 2017 promised to be more visible in Gujarat, hasn't visited the state for a long time now.

Kejriwal will seek to exploit these weaknesses in the Congress to project AAP as a credible force to take on the powerful BJP. That said, the game is playing out on Modi’s home turf.

Aurangzeb Naqshbandi  is a senior journalist who has been covering the Congress for 15 years, and is currently associated with Pixstory.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.