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Journalism of Courage
Two days before Punjab voted in 2017, the Aam Aadmi Party, which had aced the battle of perception in the run-up to the polls, released a “farewell song” for Congress’s Chief Minister hopeful Amarinder Singh.
Later, as the party would review its underwhelming performance (20 seats, a distant second to the Congress’s 77), the song in Hindi by an AAP Delhi leader, would be identified as one of the many lapses in judgment ahead of polling day. “A party leader’s attempt at humour might seem trivial. But this exemplifies how AAP unwittingly amplified the attempt to brand it as a party of outsiders,” said a senior AAP leader.
This time, ironically, AAP is leading the battle of perception precisely on the “outsider” factor. In his roadshows and nukkad sabhas, AAP convenor and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal highlighted continuously how parties had ganged up to oppose him. “(Charanjit Singh) Channi is not attacking Sukhbir Badal… Badal is not attacking Channi. The BJP, Congress, Akali Dal, they are all attacking us… because we have built schools, improved hospitals, made power free,” he said.
The message was clear: vote for the ‘Delhi Model’, give ‘Ek mauka Kejriwal nu (Kejriwal one chance)’. The CM, it was underlined, was “a successful administrator rolled into an anti-establishment outsider”, taking on the might of traditional parties.
AAP feels it is this that has other parties scared, making them fall back again on allegations such as the party hobnobbing with terrorists, and that it is this which will help it sail through come polling day Sunday.
“The mass appeal of Bhagwant Mann (AAP CM candidate) will get us seats in Malwa region, which has been our stronghold. In Majha and Doaba, we have the Delhi model of governance to overcome our relative weaknesses. Compared to 2017, we have much more to showcase in terms of governance. The ‘Kejriwal factor’ will make all the difference,” said an AAP leader.
The party also ran a more cautious campaign, ensuring no diversion from the issues it wanted to raise. So there was no hint of controversies such as the one in 2017 following Kejriwal’s night stay at the home of a man who had been cleared of terror charges. From the Congress to BJP to Akali Dal, all raked this up again close to polls, to stoke separatism fears should AAP win.
This time, AAP also kept away NRIs, who had in 2017 backed it in large numbers, including with funds. Other parties had linked them to radical Sikh outfits with networks abroad. Former DGP K P S Gill, credited with ending militancy in Punjab, had also hinted this, while adding that AAP might not be aware of what it was doing.
So cautious was AAP that attendance at many Kejriwal meetings was by invitation only. In October, many AAP workers had to return from a meeting in Bathinda when not allowed entry. For most meetings, live feed was arranged rather than even allowing media inside.
AAP hit a potential stumbling block when accusations were raised that the Delhi government was delaying the release of 1993 Delhi bomb blast accused Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, despite a Central government order. On February 16, AAP’s CM Bhagwant Mann faced protests from Nihang organisations over the matter. However, the issue didn’t catch on.
The push for the “Kejriwal vs All” campaign was in tandem, by the party’s social media campaign as well as its army of cyber volunteers. Akashnoor Singh Gadri, who led the party’s social media team, said: “The audience engagement time of AAP’s social media accounts was far more than that of other parties.”
Kejriwal also released several videos in Punjabi, highlighting AAP promises and separately addressing ‘Akali Dal and BJP voters’.
In many ways, Kejriwal’s positioning carried echoes of the projection of Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the BJP — “woh kehte hain Modi hatao, mai kehta hoon bhrashtachar hatao”. With one crucial difference: Modi’s name rarely, if ever, was taken by Kejriwal in his public addresses.
An AAP functionary said: “The fact is that even in Punjab, among many, especially Hindu voters, Modi remains popular. Despite that, many of them will not vote for the BJP because they know the party is in no position to win. In such a situation, why would AAP antagonise Hindu voters?”
Most of these voters are concentrated in urban centres, and over the last few months, Kejriwal held multiple town halls with the traders’ community to win over urban industrial and economic centres such as Jalandhar and Ludhiana. Among those the party fielded to win over migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the industrial belts was Delhi legislator Sanjeev Jha.
However, Jha was an exception with AAP largely keeping its Delhi leaders away, barring Punjab co-incharge Raghav Chadha (a Punjabi), Jarnail Singh and well-known Delhi ministers like Manish Sisodia and Satyendra Jain, who visited Punjab schools and health centres to compare them with the Capital’s, underlining the ‘Delhi Model’.
In the last leg, AAP brought in two surprise faces — Kejriwal’s wife Sunita Kejriwal and daughter Harshita — to campaign for Bhagwant Mann. The message was that Mann was like Kejriwal’s “chhota bhai”, with Sunita addressing him as “devar” and Harshita as “chachaji”.
While Sunita and Harshita had also campaigned for AAP in the 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, there was a clear message behind fielding the two in Mann’s seat. An AAP leader admitted there was lingering doubt over whether Kejriwal trusted Mann’s abilities, given the delay in declaring the popular leader as the CM candidate.
“Mann’s support base had also become restive at one point. The party is walking the extra mile to dispel those doubts. Over the last few weeks, Kejriwal and Mann have been making a flurry of joint appearances, in rallies, roadshows, TV debates. The attempt is to project a close bond between the two,” the leader said.
