‘Dip in popularity, poor show during polls’: What’s behind Kailash Gahlot’s decision to quit AAP?

According to party insiders, the AAP’s senior leadership was peeved with Gahlot, and not for the first time.

A senior AAP leader said except for the 2020 Assembly polls, Gahlot was unable to put up a satisfactory performance in his constituency in successive political contests — from the 2017 MCD polls to the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. But it was his decision to preside over this year’s state Independence Day celebrations, according to sources, that was the last straw.

With the then Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal unavailable for the event since he was in judicial custody at the time in connection with the excise policy case, Gopal Rai, the Minister in charge of the General Administration Department which hosts the event, had nominated Atishi — who has the lion’s share of more than 13 Delhi government departments, and counting, under her charge — for the task quoting the AAP convener’s decision to this effect.

In response, Delhi L-G V K Saxena had nominated Gahlot, then Delhi’s Home Minister, to unfurl the Tricolour at the ceremony after being authorised by the Ministry of Home Affairs to choose a Delhi Cabinet minister for the same. “Arvind ji is understood to be personally peeved that Gahlot did not decline the L-G’s proposal to nominate him. He was not only likely to be dropped as a minister in the next AAP government, but the party was also unlikely to give him a ticket this time around citing proven lack of popularity in his constituency,” the insider added.

With a little over 55,500 votes, Gahlot won on his home turf during the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections with a margin of around 6,000 votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, at slightly above 22,300, the AAP had secured fewer votes in his Assembly constituency compared to the Congress’s 23,354.

This year, with an alliance between the AAP and Congress in place for the Lok Sabha elections, the margin of defeat in Najafgarh was wider. BJP’s Kamaljeet Sehrawat got almost 94,000 votes on the seat, securing her win with a margin of close to 29,000 votes compared to the Congress’s Mahabal Mishra who got slightly more than 65,000.

AAP leaders also alleged Gahlot was mostly missing from the ground during its Covid outreach. “The Delhi CM had issued directions to all AAP MLAs, especially its ministers, to hit the ground and make themselves available to the people as much as possible… Gahlot neither did so nor made himself available to party workers citing health concerns,” a leader claimed.