Second innings of Kapil Mishra: AAP turncoat to BJP firebrand and Delhi minister

Mishra, the son of former East Delhi Mayor Annapurna Mishra, made his electoral debut in 2015 as an AAP candidate from Karawal Nagar, where he trounced the BJP’s Mohan Singh Bisht by over 44,000 votes. He was subsequently inducted into the Kejriwal Cabinet and allotted key portfolios like Water and Tourism.

In 2017, Mishra fell out with the AAP leadership after he alleged that then Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain had helped settle land deals worth Rs 50 crore for Kejriwal’s brother-in-law. He was later sacked from the Cabinet.

The issue led to Jain filing a defamation case against Mishra. In 2020, the court closed the case after Mishra tendered an unconditional apology to Jain.

In 2019, Mishra crossed over to the BJP and grabbed the limelight for his controversial speeches ahead of the 2020 Assembly polls. About a month ahead of the Delhi polls, Mishra sparked a row after he likened them to an “India versus Pakistan contest”. “There will be a contest on Delhi roads between India and Pakistan on February 8 (2020),” he had said then in a post on X (then Twitter), getting a show-cause notice from the Election Commission (EC), which found him guilty of violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) and imposed a 48-hour ban on his campaigning.

A day before riots broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020, Mishra had threatened to evict anti-CAA(Citizenship Amendment Act) protesters in Jaffrabad. He also warned that he will take matters into his own hands if the police failed to evict the protesters in three days. After his rally, he went on to post a video on Twitter, where he allegedly threatened the Delhi Police.

He had been accused of inciting the riots through “inflammatory speeches”, with cases pending against him in this regard before the courts.

Seen as one of the BJP’s key Brahmin faces in Delhi, Mishra went on to unsuccessfully contest the 2020 Assembly polls from Model Town, where he lost to the AAP’s Akhilesh Pati Tripathi by over 11,000 votes.

Mishra is also the founder of an organisation, Youth for Justice. He has been involved in several campaigns against farmer suicides, Yamuna encroachment and the alleged corruption scandal in the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010. He had then also authored a book, “Its Common Vs Wealth”, on the “scam”.

Mishra’s candidature in the current Delhi polls also led to controversy after the BJP preferred him over its sitting MLA Bisht from Karawal Nagar, leaving the latter sulking and calling the move “a big mistake”. The party intervened and a day later, announced Bisht as the candidate from Mustafabad. Bisht went on to win the polls and is likely to become the Deputy Speaker.

BJP insiders claim that the party has been “slowly integrating” Mishra, given his “outsider” tag among the party old-timers. In August 2023, the BJP elevated him to the position of the vice-president of its Delhi unit. Sources said the party leadership was “impressed” with his ability to pull crowds during the campaign for the 2022 Gujarat Assembly polls.

Mishra’s induction into the Delhi Cabinet now is being seen by many as the “completion of his integration” into the BJP fold.