Politics | The importance of the upcoming Delhi elections

‘I love Kejrwal’ — these three words have been seen on Delhi’s autorickshaws for a few months now and have silently marked the beginning of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) preparations for the upcoming Delhi assembly elections. More recently, the AAP officially launched its campaign with the slogan ‘Dilli Bole Dil Se, Kejriwal Phir Se’ meaning ‘Delhi says from its heart, Kejriwal once more’.

Scheduled to be held before February, the Delhi elections will be a new litmus test not just for Delhi but for India. Ruled for the last five years by the AAP, the National Capital Region is a microcosm of the 1.2 billion strong country itself. Many little communities from across the country exist within Delhi reflecting India’s religious, ethnic, geographical and linguistic diversity.

In the 2013 and 2015 assembly elections, the state’s more than 7 million voters voted for AAP in remarkable numbers. Its 2015 victory was astonishing as it beat the 2014 ‘Modi Wave’ and won 67 of the 70 assembly seats in Delhi. Since then, the rookie party has gone through ups and downs. It stretched itself too thin by contesting elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa and a few others, but got wiser by 2019 and focussed only on Punjab where it emerged as the largest opposition party.

Displaying his shrewd and perceptive side, over the last couple of years, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has also changed strategy — from being seen as the only politician who could take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he now maintains that he doesn’t see himself as Modi’s opponent and that his only wish is to govern Delhi better. Through surveys and other assessments Kejriwal and the AAP have ascertained that taking on Modi in Delhi would be counter-productive given the Prime Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) ability to divert attention from issues such as electricity, water, jobs and inflation with the rhetoric of religion and Pakistan. Of course, the fact is that the AAP’s voter base overlaps substantially with that of the BJP — it is largely urban, and barring some seats, overwhelmingly Hindu.

To its credit the AAP government has managed to focus the discourse on Delhi away from the BJP’s strong points of communal polarisation and nationalistic jingoism. Today, an average Delhite is easily able to cite AAP’s successes: better schools, cheaper electricity and water, and improved health services. The upcoming Delhi election will show whether it is such hard governance issues that prevail or will the Delhi voter be lured by issues such as the NRC-Citizenship Amendment Act, abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and cow slaughter.

According to a recent survey by Lokniti-CSDS, nearly 90 per cent of Delhi prefers Kejriwal to Modi and a majority of those surveyed believe that the AAP government has delivered on its promises. This is a huge fillip for a small party going into election after completing its first-ever term. The Delhi election is crucial not just because it is a challenge for Kejriwal but also because it will reveal between the BJP and the Congress as to who will emerge as the main challenger to the AAP.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP swept Delhi winning all seven seats, the Congress came second in five and the AAP was a distant third. However, not too much can be read into the AAP’s Lok Sabha performance in regard to the assembly elections wherein local issues tend to dominate voting preferences.

At present, the BJP’s Delhi unit is riven with factionalism between ‘local’ leaders and ‘outsiders’ who have been foisted by the party’s national leadership. The Congress on the other hand is hopeful of a revival after failing to win even a single seat in the 2015 election. Which among these parties emerges stronger will also send a message to the rest of the country, especially to Bihar which goes to polls towards the end of 2020.

Delhi has a large population of migrants from Bihar and the poll campaign in one state will affect the other. Therefore, with the JD(U) officially taking a stand against the implementation of NRC in Bihar, it remains to be seen whether its ally, the BJP, will harp on it the way it did in Haryana and Maharashtra elections in 2019.

In summation, the Delhi election will signal a few phenomenon in the short-term: whether a small and new party such as the AAP will emerge victorious against the Modi-Shah juggernaut that the BJP has become, whether real issues of governance will prevail or not, and lastly, whether it will mark the beginning of the Congress’ revival in a state that it ruled for 15 years before the AAP took over.

Valay Singh is a freelance journalist. Views expressed personal.