Today in Politics: As Delhi goes to polls, what is at stake for AAP, BJP, Congress

As Contributing Editor Neerja Chowdhury wrote in one of her weekly columns, this election is almost an existential battle for Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a make-or-break battle.

“If Kejriwal loses Delhi — it is a fight this time — the party could face an existential crisis,” Neerja wrote. “A defeated AAP will be a sitting duck for the BJP and may erode at the seams or even splinter. Out of power and under attack, it will be difficult for even the lion-hearted amongst the AAP MLAs to resist the pressures that will likely come their way.”

What gives the AAP a chance is the support it has appeared to retain among the working classes. As National Opinion Editor Vandita Mishra wrote in a despatch, “On the whole, be it the free electricity and bus ride, or the better functioning government school — they matter, most of all, for the large and ever growing numbers at the city’s bottom-most rungs, who came from all over the country in search of work and a better life and education for their children. To those struggling daily for a foothold in India’s capital, they offer something to hold on to. In these sections, the AAP retains support, despite patchy delivery.”

BJP

For the BJP, the election is important as Delhi, with its substantial migrant population “also fashions the politics of the Hindi heartland”, Neerja explains in her latest column that is out today. “It is here that the BJP has the highest stakes and from where it draws its strength and ability to control the country.”

The BJP, she adds, will look to avoid the political message that will go out if it fails to “wrest ‘little’ Delhi from a ‘disruptor’ such as Kejriwal”. The BJP views Kejriwal as a threat beyond Delhi and Punjab and would want to deal him a huge blow come February 8 when the results are declared.

“By and large, as you move up the ladder of income, privilege and opportunity — as a rough and ready measure, in households not benefited by the AAP’s provision of 200 units of free electricity because their monthly consumption exceeds the cut-off in increasing degrees — the BJP’s appeal, earlier largely confined to the Centre, may now be making inroads into the arena of the city,” Vandita wrote in her second despatch.

“Anti-incumbency has made increasing dents over the years, sharpened by the government’s patchy and uneven delivery. There is a sense that the AAP stopped at a politics of ‘freebies’ or subsidies, and that it lost its way especially in its second term, because of its own troubles or due to its unrelenting hostilities with the Centre-BJP,” she wrote, giving a sense of what may be driving a section of the electorate.

Congress

Largely confined to being the third wheel of Delhi politics for almost a decade now, this election will reveal if the Congress is well and truly on the margins of politics in the national capital or if it can revive after two successive elections of failing to open its account.

The degree of its revival and how much of the AAP’s votes — which was once its — the party dents may end up deciding which way the election swings. The party believes that its comeback in Delhi has to come at the AAP’s cost. That could be one of the reasons for Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s bitter criticism of Kejriwal on the campaign trail, Chief of National Bureau (Politics) Manoj CG wrote in a recent analysis article.

“Congress leaders argue that the BJP has a captive vote bank in the capital — its vote share remained more or less between 32% and 38% in the Assembly elections since 1998 — and does not largely overlap with that of the Congress. The AAP, on the other hand, has taken away almost all of the Congress’s support base,” Manoj wrote.

However, once the dust settles, it has to be seen how this bitter campaign affects the relationship between the parties at the INDIA bloc high table. Not just the AAP, the indications are that other parties in the Opposition bloc have also not taken too kindly to the Congress’s poll rhetoric.