In March, days after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the Punjab Assembly elections with a resounding majority, the party’s leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal addressed the Delhi Assembly. In his speech, Kejriwal mocked the top brass of the BJP for allegedly making its leaders promote The Kashmir Files movie. He invited the BJP members of the House to join the AAP, saying that in his party they would be asked to work for people and not promote movies. Last Tuesday, Kejriwal again took on the BJP in the Assembly. He accused the party of “delaying” the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls, claiming that the party was scared of the AAP. “Delhi BJP is delaying elections fearing massive defeat. One by one all the parties in the country are going down. They broke all of them, the entire country is watching … Keval Aam Aadmi Party hai jisse BJP ki pant geeli hoti hai. BJP ke top ke neta dono AAP se darte hain. (It is only the AAP that the BJP is terrified of. The top two leaders of the BJP are scared of the AAP).” These speeches reminded many people of the Kejriwal who burst onto Delhi’s political stage in 2012 and stormed to power a few years later. Party insiders and political observers pointed out that the AAP leader toned down his attacks on the BJP after the 2019 Lok Sabha election results. But, since the AAP’s victory in Punjab, he has been slowly recalibrating his approach and returning to his former self. In the first few years of the AAP, the Delhi CM’s attacks on the BJP tended to be scathing, sometimes verging on the personal when it came to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2015, months after AAP took office with a full majority, the CBI raided Kejriwal’s office over a corruption case against his then principal secretary Rajendra Kumar. The CM hit out at Modi, calling him a “coward and psychopath”. As the general elections approached in 2019, AAP and Kejriwal’s attacks on the PM and the BJP grew sharper. Kejriwal questioned Modi’s education degrees, called him a dictator, and raised questions about the Bakakot airstrikes. This aggressive approach, according to AAP leaders, hurt the party as it lost all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi to the BJP. With several internal surveys showing that the AAP and Kejriwal suffer when he criticises top BJP leaders, especially Modi, the Delhi CM changed tack and stopped the aggressive attacks after the debacle in 2019. He instead started speaking about working in coordination with the Union government for nation-building, and focussed on the work the AAP was doing in the national Capital. “When we spoke to people, we realise that they do not want Kejriwal in a combative role anymore,” said a senior AAP leader. “He is the CM and should stop fighting. This is what most people told us. People’s irritation with that line also reflected first in the MCD polls (in 2017, BJP won the polls for the third time in a row) and then in the 2019 general elections. We decided to change the messaging well in time for the Delhi assembly polls in 2020 and it served us well.” What changed? Till earlier this year, Kejriwal desisted from launching blistering attacks on the BJP. In the Assembly monsoon session of 2021, he spoke in support of a resolution calling for Bharat Ratna to be conferred on environmental activist Sunder Lal Bahuguna. In the Assembly this January, he criticised the farm laws that led to a year-long protest at Delhi’s borders. He questioned the way in which the laws were pushed through Parliament without discussion but did not attack either Modi or Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Even in the speeches during the Punjab poll campaign, the AAP chief criticised the BJP but did not make personal remarks about any leader. Then, the party won a landslide victory in Punjab. A senior AAP leader who did not wish to be named said, “It was the win in Punjab, where the AAP saw a clear opportunity to win because of the antagonism against the BJP that changed some things for the AAP again. People have said repeatedly that this Kejriwal reminds them of the old Kejriwal – full of sarcasm and not scared to call people out. His language is what people use when talking to each other at home and among friends. That is his connect. He will say things just the way we do when talking to our friends.” But a former AAP leader this strategy could harm the party ahead of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections. “Both states are going to be an uphill climb and a lesson for the AAP, irrespective of which way the result goes. Do they want to now utilise this new strategy of personal attacks and leave behind something that has already worked for them? It is true that Kejriwal emphasises work and promises more, but it may serve the AAP better to stick to just that and leave the personal jibes alone.”
