Opinion What AAP didn’t get: Delhi looks for results

Delhi — as many outsiders like me, who have made the city their home for the last three decades, can attest to — is a very transactional city. Here, there is always give-and-take. There is a certain brutal selfishness of the city that rubs off on its residents. Residents define and revel in the transactionalism that is the DNA of the city.

This transactional behaviour runs through its business, trade, government and even RWAs. Nobody gives you anything for free. In this city of power, you need to deliver the goods. Perform or perish is the mantra. In some ways, New Delhi is as transactional and brutal as New York.

The city rewards those who perform. In the two-and-a-half decades that I have lived in Delhi — covering it from 1999 to 2006 — this has defined the city’s politics.

Back then, the Delhi government was under Sheila Dikshit, the numero uno in the Delhi Congress at the time. Other leaders would vie for attention but were kept in check by the “Congress high command”. She performed and was rewarded.

Delhi is very clear-headed as well. Although she came to power in 1998, the first election she won on the record of her performance was in 2003. She got 47 seats at the time — this is almost close to the BJP’s tally in 2025. That election was won solely on her performance of infrastructure building in the city.

And between 1998 and 2004, she managed the art of governance by making friends with opponents: The BJP-led NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in power at the Centre. Despite strong ideological differences, she managed to negotiate with adversaries. She sat down with oil and gas minister Ram Naik to implement the transition of Delhi’s entire public transport fleet from diesel to CNG. She did the same with power minister Suresh Prabhu, and later Anant Geete, when it came to the privatisation of Delhi’s power distribution system.

On Delhi’s urban infrastructure — roads, flyovers, metro — she didn’t hesitate to sit down with the NDA’s four urban development ministers over five years: Jagmohan, Ananth Kumar, B C Khanduri and Bandaru Dattatreya.

And, of course, there were Lieutenant Governors — Vijai Kapoor, Tejendra Khanna and B L Joshi — who were no pushovers. She met with them at least once a week and negotiated. Delhi, having won the bid to host the Commonwealth Games, needed all the help to build the requisite civic infrastructure by 2010. And Dikshit — with help from the BJP first and the Congress-led UPA from 2004 — was able to deliver on most projects. To many of us who covered that period, the challenges came more from the Congress ministers and leaders at the Centre; she was skilful in persuading adversaries and getting things done for the city she ruled.

After 10 years in power, Delhi rewarded her in 2008 again — in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games — although Congress’s tally was diminished at 43 (out of 70) seats as against 47 in 2003.

The BJP, in those years, was a pale shadow to the Delhi Congress. The BJP in Delhi was led by Harsh Vardhan (who later became health minister) and in the Vidhan Sabha, it was led by Jagdish Mukhi (who later became Governor of Assam, Nagaland and Mizoram). So timid was their opposition in the Delhi Assembly that they earned the epithet of a “loyal Opposition” in front of Dikshit.

Delhi’s reason to keep Dikshit in power was also rooted in her responsiveness to the city’s problems. Most of the time, whenever there were reports and stories in the media about potholed roads or overflowing garbage dumps, she or her Cabinet ministers were quick to resolve them — sometimes within hours, if not days. But, as the Commonwealth Games wrapped up and the stories of profligacy and corruption came out, the Anna Hazare movement shepherded by activist Arvind Kejriwal metamorphosed into an Opposition party, the AAP. After three terms, Dikshit was defeated, and the AAP — after a 49-day stint in 2013-14 — won the elections in 2015.

The city wanted more and better. Its transactionalism was again on full display, as Kejriwal’s AAP got an unthinkable number and mandate: 67 seats out of 70. Congress was reduced to zero. Kejriwal was not just given a mandate; it was a trust that Delhi reposed in him. Because people here saw his potential to deliver.

In 10 years, he worked on education and did reach out to the city’s poor and the middle class, but frittered away his chances slowly and steadily. The profligacy in renovating the Chief Minister’s residence — a reasonably modest one occupied by the Delhi Assembly Speaker Chaudhary Prem Singh back in the day — turned away many avowed supporters and sympathisers. Continuing his confrontational and agitational politics, over the last decade, Delhi saw him in run-ins with the powerful BJP-led central government and its nominee, the Lieutenant Governor. He was unable to negotiate with adversaries for the betterment of the city. The BJP kept chipping away at the image of Kejriwal, who had promised Delhi better governance. The city’s infrastructure suffered, and its people — who had once given him brute majorities of 95 and 88 per cent (67 and 62 seats in 2015 and 2020 respectively) — ran out of patience.

The voter made her call — after giving him chances for not one, but two terms. Now, the BJP enters the fray with almost the same number of seats as Sheila Dikshit’s Congress won in 2003, and the AAP has a tally of around the same number of seats as the BJP back then. The BJP has all the cards with itself — with a cooperative Centre for the coming four-and-half years — as it faces the AAP, which has agitation in its DNA; the BJP has no excuses. It has to offer an alternative to AAP’s governance style, which was often overwhelmed by dysfunction and chaos. Almost three decades later, Delhi has given it a chance, and wants a better city in return.

shubhajit.roy@expressindia.com