© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Since Delhi’s first legislative Assembly was constituted in 1952, the national capital has had only eight Assemblies and Chief Ministers. This is because for 37 years, from 1956 to 1993, Delhi’s Assembly was abolished and it was made a Union Territory. The national capital nonetheless boasts a colourful political history, with the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, and Aam Aadmi Party dominating at different points of time.
Who gets to govern Delhi? This question has loomed large over Delhi’s politics since the city became the capital of British India in 1911.
By 1919, the British had broken Delhi away from the erstwhile Punjab province. The capital was effectively brought under direct rule of the Viceroy, through a Chief Commissioner. After Independence, this system continued, except the Chief Commissioner was now under the President of India.
When the Constitution was adopted on Jaunuary 26, 1950, Delhi was classified as a centrally administered Part-C state. It was one of seven such states — the others being Bhopal, Ajmer, Coorg, Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, and Vindhya Pradesh — to have a legislative Assembly, although the powers of this Assembly were limited.
In the 1951-52 elections, Delhi had 42 Assembly constituencies, and 48 seats in the Assembly in total (six constituencies sent two members to the House). Congress secured 39 seats, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (predecessor of the BJP) won five, while the Socialist Party won two.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru chose Brahm Prakash, a 34-year-old Yadav farmer and president of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, as Delhi’s first Chief Minister, bypassing the claims made by Congress stalwart and Chandni Chowk MLA Dr Yudhvir Singh. Prakash took oath as CM on March 17, 1952.
The young CM, however, soon clashed with the Chief Commissioner — much like Delhi CMs in recent years have been clashing with Lieutenant Governors (LG) appointed by the Centre. The clash ended with Prakash’s eventual resignation on February 12, 1955.
In an interview to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library (then the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library), Prakash said “[After] A D Pandit became Chief Commissioner, he wanted to interfere in every matter… he did not like any elected representative…”.
Prakash also spoke about how his 1955 proposal for carving out a Maha Dilli — a state comprising Delhi, parts of Western UP, Punjab, and Rajasthan — was not received well by the Centre. This would have seen Delhi becoming a full state.
“This was opposed by the Congress’ UP leadership, particularly [then Union Home Minister] Govind Ballabh Pant who said that the land of Ram and Krishna cannot be divided… Perhaps Panditji [Nehru] also did not like it… Politically, I had to pay a huge price for that,” Prakash said.
After Prakash’s resignation, Daryaganj MLA Gurumukh Nihal Singh was sworn in as Chief Minister on February 13. But his tenure would not last long.
The States Reorganisation Commission headed by Justice Fazl Ali submitted its report just a few months after Nihal Singh entered office. It notably said that “the future of Delhi has to be determined primarily by the important consideration that it is the seat of the Union Government”, and that it was “not surprising” that the “peculiar diarchical structure” in place at the time had “not worked smoothly”. The Commission thus recommended that “a separate state government” for Delhi was no longer required.
On November 1, 1956, Nihal Singh resigned, the Delhi Assembly was abolished, and Delhi became a Union Territory.
37 years without an Assembly
The Fazl Ali Commission had also recommended handing over local governance to the people of Delhi. The Delhi Municipal Corporation Act was thus passed in 1957, and constituted a municipal corporation for the whole of Delhi. (The New Delhi Municipal Council was operational in some shape or form from as early as 1913, but its jurisdiction was only restricted to what is today called Lutyens’ Delhi).
This did not, however, put an end to demands for statehood and an elected Assembly. The Delhi Administration Act of 1966 was meant to placate these demands. It provided for a Metropolitan Council, a democratic body comprising 56 elected members, and 5 members nominated by the President. However, this body only had recommendatory powers. The ultimate decision-making authority in Delhi still vested with the Centre, through an LG or Administrator appointed by the President.
The Council’s first polls were held in 1967. Vijay Kumar Malhotra became the Chief Executive Councillor (CEC) while L K Advani became the Council’s Chairman after the Jana Sangh won 33 seats. In the 1972 polls, Congress won 44 seats, and Radha Raman became CEC. Mir Mushtaq Ahmed became the Chairman.
In 1977, the Janata Party won 46 seats. Kidar Nath Sahni became CEC and Kalka Dass the Chairman. In 1983, Congress returned to power with 34 seats. Jag Parvesh Chandra became CEC and Purushottam Goyal became the chairman of the Council.
While it remained a UT, almost every politician in the capital fought for statehood, or at the very least a proper legislative Assembly with more than just recommendatory powers. Finally, in 1991, the P V Narasimha Rao government restored some powers to the Delhi government.
Delhi was to have an Assembly with 70 seats. But its government was to have no control over land (which remained with the DDA, a statutory body under the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs), and law and order (Delhi Police stayed under the Union Home Ministry). This system remains in place today.
Assembly elections held in November 1993 were dominated by the BJP, with leaders such as Madan Lal Khurana, O P Kohli, and V K Malhotra leading the charge. The party won 49 seats, even as the Congress’ tally dropped to 14, in no small part due to the party’s role in the anti-Sikh riots that rocked the national capital in 1984. Khurana took oath as the third Delhi CM on December 2.
In 1995, however, Khurana’s name appeared in the infamous Hawala scandal that implicated leaders across party lines. Due to mounting pressure, he was forced to resign less than a year later, paving the way for Jat leader Sahib Singh Verma to become the fourth Delhi CM on February 27.
But the BJP continued to slide in the national capital, amidst rampant infighting and a leadership crisis. Just a few months ahead of the 1998 Assembly polls, Sushma Swaraj, who at the time was the MP from South Delhi, was sworn in as CM on October 13.
But this could not save the BJP’s sinking ship. Congress came to power, winning 52 seats. The party would rule Delhi for the next 15 years.
In 1998, Congress’ new president Sonia Gandhi appointed Sheila Dikshit as the chief of the party’s Delhi unit. The daughter-in-law of Uma Shankar Dikshit, a prominent Congress leader in the 1960s and 1970s, Sheila Dikshit rose to political prominence in the 1980s, when she served in Rajiv Gandhi’s council of ministers.
After she led the Congress to massive victory in Delhi in 1998, Dikshit was rewarded with the Chief Ministership. She took oath for the first time on December 3.
Dikshit strengthened the Congress’s hold over Delhi, and went on to become the longest serving woman CM in the history of independent India. During her term, Delhi saw a spurt of infrastructural development, from the construction of tens of flyovers to the Delhi Metro. Dikshit also championed Delhi buses switching to CNG, privatised power distribution companies, and trifurcated the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
Meanwhile, the BJP struggled to put its act together. Ahead of the 2003 polls, although many in the party wanted younger leaders like Arun Jaitley and Dr Harsh Vardhan to take the lead, the old guard decided to once again project Khurana as the party’s CM face. The BJP won only 20 seats. Dikshit returned to power with 47.
Then in 2008, the BJP looked past Harsh Vardhan once again, this time in favour of V K Malhotra, another older face. Despite facing heavy anti-incumbency, Dikshit retained power, winning 43 out of 70 seats.
After the results were announced, Advani and other BJP leaders complained to the Election Commission of India, alleging manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) by the Congress.
By the time the 2013 polls came along, the Congress was in dire straits both nationally and in Delhi. Manmohan Singh’s UPA government at the Centre had been rocked by a spate of corruption allegations which gave birth to a powerful anti-graft movement in Delhi.
The ostensibly apolitical India Against Corruption movement, which peaked in 2010-11, has had a lasting impact on India’s politics. Not only did it pave the way for Congress to be removed from power at the Centre in 2014, it also introduced a new player in the politics of Delhi.
The Aam Aadmi Party was formed in November 2012 by the likes of Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Prashant Bhushan, and Yogendra Yadav (the last two were expelled in 2015), all of whom rose to national prominence on the coattails of India Against Corruption. AAP came with the promise of cleaning up politics, and ushering in true accountability.
Despite being less than a year old, AAP in the 2013 polls managed to win 28 seats, with Kejriwal defeating Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency. Congress won only eight seats, and the BJP under Harsh Vardhan 31.
With the Assembly hung, Kejriwal went back on his promise to “never take support from the Congress”, and became CM. But he resigned after only 49 days, citing his failure to mobilise support for anti-corruption legislation.
Delhi would be under the President’s rule for about a year, until polls were held again in February 2015. This time, the BJP projected former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, another prominent face during the IAC movement, as its CM candidate — with disastrous consequences.
Kejriwal and AAP won a whopping 67 of 70 seats. BJP was left with only three seats, while the Congress failed to open its account. AAP comfortably returned to power in 2020, winning 62 seats.
