OpinionUpdated: March 11, 2022 2:14 pm IST
It was 2014. AAP had lost all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi and within the party, serious questions were being raised about Arvind Kejriwal’s leadership. I had gone to meet him in Tihar Jail along with his wife. In the meeting hall, there was chaos, and it was crowded. Jail inmates and those who came to meet them were separated by a metal mesh. As we walked in, I saw Arvind Kejriwal walking slowly to the mesh. He was pale and forlorn. This was not the Arvind Kejriwal I had known. He was the angry, young man of new India. He had done the impossible by winning 29 seats in the Delhi assembly elections just a year earlier. He had then formed the government with the outside support of the Congress party but resigned as Chief Minister in just 49 days.
After losing badly in Delhi in the parliament elections, AAP’s revolution was considered over. Then he was sent to jail by for not submitting a bail bond. Modi had won the election but had not yet been sworn in as Prime Minister. There was hope in the air but Arvind Kejriwal, the new revolutionary, was in despair. Within the party, a section led by a senior leader was gunning for him. He was blamed for the pathetic performance of the AAP in the general election. AAP had then contested more than 400 seats and had lost deposits in almost every seat except in Delhi and Punjab. This included stalwarts like Yogendra Yadav and Kumar Vishwas. Instead of the party taking the blame, it was Arvind Kejriwal who was attacked. Stories were being planted in the media and leaders were openly criticizing him.
Arvind Kejriwal (file photo)After getting bail, a meeting of AAP’s national executive was held. As expected, he was targeted for the election fiasco. Few senior leaders tried to have him removed as National Convenor.As he started speaking, his voice started cracking, his eyes welled up with tears. He kept looking down. Suddenly he burst into tears. Everybody present was stunned. There was pin drop silence. He then said that he had not come into politics to become the National Convenor. That this was the lowest moment in his life.
This was a transformative moment in his political life. He realised that nothing succeeds like success. After the meeting, he was a changed man. He gathered all his courage, conviction and acumen. He had six months to win back Delhi and he did it in the most remarkable fashion, winning 67 seats. Since then, he has not looked back. Kejriwal today has again performed a miracle. After failing to wrest Punjab in 2017, when AAP’s victory was a foregone conclusion, he did not lose heart and in 2022, he has delivered a “chamatkar”. Today, AAP is the new hope of Punjab like it was in Delhi in 2015. Punjab has given 93 seats out of 117 to AAP.
In the 2014 parliamentary elections, when AAP had drawn a blank everywhere else, it won four parliamentary seats in the state with a 23% vote share. While campaigning in Punjab, Kejriwal had drawn huge crowds. It was expected that in 2017, AAP would be a very formidable force. After two years of intense work on the ground, it created a robust organisation in every part of the state. But disappointingly, AAP’s over-enthusiasm did not translate into reality and it got only 20 seats and 22% vote, way behind the Congress which took 77 seats. AAP was so crestfallen that it forgot to celebrate the fact that as a new party that contesting assembly elections for the first time, it had done fabulously well and had emerged as the main Opposition party.
It had made three mistakes:
1. AAP was labelled a party of outsiders. AAP had pushed its entire Delhi leadership and volunteer force into Punjab. From the beginning, it was a Delhi squad controlling the show, the local leadership had almost no say in either the party organisation or the candidate selection. The local Punjab team felt suffocated and resentful but could not say much.
2. Unintentionally and unknowingly, AAP was seen as aligned with a section of extremists. Arvind Kejriwal during one of his visits stayed in a flat which was owned in the past by an ex-terrorist and this was exploited by the Congress, which accused AAP being in collusion with the Khalistan elements. The way NRIs living in Canada, America and Europe descended in Punjab to campaign for AAP also gave a false impression about its collusion with secessionists.
3. AAP did not announce a Chief Ministerial candidate. It was said that Kejriwal nurtured ambitions for the top seat in the state or a ‘proxy’ nominated by him would run the government.
In 2021-22, AAP made amends. Delhi leaders and volunteers had strict instructions not to be visible on the ground and remain behind the scenes. It was very careful not to be seen in the company of anyone who was remotely aligned with extremist politics. And announcing the hugely popular Bhagwant Mann as the Chief Ministerial candidate proved to be the master stroke. To top it all, AAP, like Modi’s “Gujarat Model” successfully sold the “Kejriwal Model of Governance.” The Delhi model is transactional in nature. The promise of free water and electricity and its successful delivery has brought huge goodwill in the national capital. AAP sold the same dream to the voters of Punjab. The confusion, chaos and bitter conflict in Congress also disillusioned voters who switched to AAP.
Punjab is on the verge of financial bankruptcy. Running Delhi which is a revenue surplus state and cosmopolitan in nature is much easier than administering Punjab, where politics and religion are intertwined. Running all this will be AAP’s big challenge; unless it gets innovative within a certain cultural milieu, it will be tough to emulate the Delhi model.
Kejriwal is now a veteran and calculating politician who has weathered many storms, has wisened up enough to know that every state is different and needs different strategies. He will need all his best resources to deliver to Punjab what it has been promised.
(Ashutosh is author of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and Editor, satyahindi.com.)