As Arvind Kejriwal punts on his political future, watch AAP play ‘ball by ball’

On Sunday, in an impassioned speech at an AAP rally, he announced his resignation. “Let the people decide if I am imandaar (honest) or gunahgaar (guilty),” he thundered. It was an attempt to recapture the high moral ground when he said he would not continue as the CM till Delhi’s janata had decided on his “innocence” or “guilt” and each of those votes would be treated like like a “certificate”. Kejriwal will know that as the poorer sections of Delhi and its jhuggi jhopri (slum) dwellers remain loyal to the AAP, the party has lost some of its earlier sheen among the middle classes.

With his decision to resign, the AAP national convenor has taken a gamble and sounded the bugle for the Delhi Assembly elections. He has tried to usher in a new narrative, making “Kejriwal”, his leadership, and all that he stands for the pivotal issues. (There was a time during the 1971 elections when Indira Gandhi was questioned by a foreign correspondent about the issue in the election. ”I am the issue,” she unabashedly replied.)

Kejriwal appears to be banking on three factors to help him reshape the party agenda. One is the continuance of his delivery politics of bijlee (electricity), paani (water), schools, and hospitals for which his government is known and which the party has encashed in past elections. I recently visited the Mangolpuri area of North West Delhi to get a sense of the impact the just-released Manish Sisodia’s daily padyatras through the city were having.

“Why will we not vote for AAP when our children now learn at school, we can get medical aid, our bijlee-paani is taken care of? And also we can now travel free in the buses,” said a group of women who sold wares on the pavement. “It is wrong they are keeping Kejriwal in jail,” they added.

To retain this sympathy will be Kejriwal’s second objective and he will hope an electoral endorsement will “finish off” the case against him and Sisodia even as it goes on to its legal conclusion. The arrest of the AAP leaders had generated sympathy for the party in certain sections. But with the release of the AAP leaders, the sympathy for them will peter out as time goes by and elections are due five months away. Will Kejriwal’s resignation as CM now regenerate sympathy for him on a different count?

Thirdly, the AAP chief is pitching to regain his moral stature while underscoring his political savvy for which he has been known. Kejriwal knows only too well that every election needs a fresh narrative and he cannot rely on old themes alone.

Who will be his successor, even if it is for a few weeks? Will it be a woman, a Dalit, or his wife? It will only be for a short spell, till November if his request to hold the Delhi elections along with the Maharashtra polls is heeded, or for three months more if the polls are held on schedule in February?

A woman to head the Delhi government could make a difference to the women’s constituency that Kejriwal has been assiduously reaching out to. In his speech on Sunday, he chose to make public the information that he had sent a letter to the Lieutenant Governor from jail, requesting him to let Atishi unfurl the national flag on August 15 in his place but that the letter came back undelivered. Educated, experienced and with a clean image, Atishi, a minister in the Delhi government, could have an appeal for the old “Shiela Dixit constituency” the AAP may want to draw to its side. Though the name of Kejriwal’s wife Sunita is also doing the rounds, it will take away from the moral high ground he is seeking to occupy at this juncture.

There are also other names being talked about: Gopal Rai and Saurabh Bhardwaj. The trouble is that, unlike most other parties, the AAP does not have caste or identity-based support to bank on.

Resignation as a weapon

Kejriwal is in line with all those politicians who have wielded “resignation” with great effect as a weapon to get out of difficult situations. Indian political history is replete with these stories: India’s seventh prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh resigned from the government of Rajiv Gandhi in 1987 and went on to replace him as PM in 1989. Dr Manmohan Singh threatened to resign as PM in mid-2008 to get his way in the party to push through with the Indo-US nuclear deal.

In the last 10 years, while the people of Delhi have opted for Narendra Modi’s BJP in successive Lok Sabha elections, they have favoured the AAP in the Assembly elections. Even as Kejriwal and the AAP get ready for battle against their main opponent BJP, this time there may be an elephant in the room. That is the Congress. In some ways, despite itself, the Congress is showing signs of being on the revival path because people want it to grow as a national counter to the BJP.

Even though both parties are members of the INDIA alliance, the breakup of the Congress’s alliance with AAP in Haryana could have implications for Delhi and the AAP leadership knows this only too well and is getting ready to do battle alone.

Two days before Kejriwal’s release, when asked about the party’s course of action, Sisodia told this writer, “It will be ball by ball, and we have to decide how to play each ball.” The AAP story will now unfold ball by ball.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)