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Journalism of Courage
As the campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections drew to a close Monday, it also brought the curtains down on a poll that will reverberate far beyond the 70 seats at stake. A return to power will mean a giant victory for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), after surviving the jailing of its entire top brass, and against a party like the BJP that few have been able to so successfully withstand for so long.
Another BJP win, on the other hand, will put the AAP’s ability to bounce back under severe stress.
But, whatever happens come February 8, the AAP cannot be accused of not trying. Long before other parties turned their attention to Delhi, AAP workers hit the ground, trying to repair the cracks in its support base.
Said a senior party leader: “We started campaigning in September itself. In a way, this has perhaps been our longest and most intense election campaign, and most similar to the one we executed in 2015.”
The leader added that a considered decision was taken to not hold big rallies but go door-to-door, like the then fledgling party did 10 years ago. “Kejriwal ji addressed at least three jansabhas a day, alongside campaigning in his own constituency, New Delhi. Big rallies distract MLAs and suck up resources. Our focus was on reaching the voter on the ground.”
Alongside Kejriwal was Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
This was in contrast to Prime Minister Modi’s four large rallies and the BJP’s mega electoral machine which saw BJP president J P Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and all BJP state chief ministers, including Yogi Adityanath, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Pushkar Dhami, campaigning in the city for several days.
On how 2015 was similar, a senior AAP leader said: “People’s hearts had to be won all over again then. We had to make them believe we were not a one-time wonder… This time too, we were cornered… which is why we went back to the basics.”
If, in 2015, AAP volunteers stood apart for their signature white caps, now they sported yellow and blue scarves. Also, the ragtag volunteer group of that time acquired a more defined shape in the form of 250 “winners” – comprising AAP councillors, MLAs, including from Punjab, and campaign managers with a track record of winning seats.
“The 250 people were in charge of polling booths. They did not report to AAP candidates but to the leadership on a daily basis. Strategy was changed after their inputs,” a party leader said.
From the start of December till the first week of January, AAP leaders staged Ramlilas, where its prominent MLAs such as Saurabh Bharadwaj, Somnath Bharti, Sanjeev Jha and others held regular meetings with people. The Ramlilas also tied in with the urban Hindu image that the AAP has been trying to court, especially since 2019, to fight the BJP.
Further, the AAP ensured that it did not disintegrate, as the BJP had counted on, after high-profile arrests, including Kejriwal and his deputy CM Manish Sisodia, among others. Instead, Kejriwal held the moral high ground by choosing to serve out his time in jail as CM, and then quitting unexpectedly after he was released. Come elections, he was back as the party’s CM face.
Kejriwal also went big on the AAP’s popular welfare schemes, not shying away from the “revdi” charge made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The AAP promised not just to fulfill its government’s budget promise of Rs 1,000 for women under the age of 60 who do not pay taxes, but also announced that if returned to power, it would increase this to Rs 2,100.
To preempt a possible BJP offensive on not fulfilling its initial promise, the AAP went to work in October. “We formed 5,000 teams of women who went neighbourhood to neighbourhood, talking to groups of 15-20 women about the benefits they would get from a Kejriwal government,” an AAP leader said. The teams also informed the women how the BJP government at the Centre via the Lieutenant Governor had stalled its functioning.
It had several examples to make this charge stick. Like the ordinance by the Centre nullifying a May 2023 Supreme Court order said that the Services Department, which governs the bureaucracy, should come under the control of the elected Delhi government and not the Lt Governor.
Closer to the elections, after AAP volunteers hit the ground as part of a “registration” drive for the Rs 2,100 dole for women, in an unprecedented move, senior officers in the Delhi government released public notices and disowned the process.
A senior party leader said they banked on the public to see through such BJP measures. Particularly as the BJP itself was repeatedly assuring that it won’t scrap any of the AAP government’s welfare measures and came up with its own scheme for women.
“People talk about Modi ji’s oratory skills, but no one can set a narrative better than Kejriwal.,, The BJP may do slightly better this time, but the pitch they are playing on was laid by Kejriwal and the AAP,” said the leader.
If “freebies” was one aspect of this, the other was the push for the middle class, after the AAP sensed that this group was turning away from it. So, midway through its campaign, it changed tack. In addition to talking about its social welfare schemes and promises, the AAP called for revision of income tax brackets, including zero tax for those earning less than Rs 10 lakh a year – timing it to the run-up to the Union Budget.
So, when the Budget actually made landmark changes, including no tax for those earning up to Rs 12 lakh per annum, the AAP claimed it as its “victory”.
Irrespective of the result, Kejriwal would also have shown the strength of his image surviving at least two high-profile campaigns against him – over the alleged excise policy scam and the so-called ‘Sheesh Mahal’ built under him. Both the BJP and Congress raised heat on him over these issues.
The AAP was accused of “compromising” on its anti-corruption agenda by including leaders from other parties like Veer Singh Dhingan, whom Kejriwal had once protested against.
Several high-profile associates who left Kejriwal over the past few years, the biggest being former transport minister Kailash Gahlot, also added to this clamour against the AAP chief.
However, on the ground, if the excise policy charges didn’t seem to stick, ‘Sheesh Mahal’ too didn’t get much traction.
Another success of the AAP was in ensuring that the anti-incumbency tag largely didn’t wash, with many voters pointing to the “interference” of the Lt Governor and Centre leaving its government only half-equipped in a half state.
Still, this could prove a double-edged sword. People also talked of picking the BJP for precisely this, as it offered, in contrast, a “double engine sarkaar”.
With the BJP reassuring that the AAP government’s schemes would continue, Ram Badan Singh, a carpenter based in Madanpur Khadar who voted for the AAP in 2015 and 2020, said all options were open. “Jab sab hi de rahe hain, to iss baar Modi ji ko mauka dena chahiye (If everyone is making offers, one should give Modi ji a chance this time).”
