New Delhi: With the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) firing yet another salvo by accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of luring its legislators with bribes running into crores, it is clear that the Arvind Kejriwal-led political party has refused to buckle under pressure.
Both the parties have often been at loggerheads, usually over frequent tussles between the Delhi government and the Centre-controlled Lieutenant-General. However, the fresh round of altercation since Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia’s residence was raided by the CBI has assumed greater political proportions than before.
AAP, which has often sidestepped criticising the BJP in moments when the saffron party earned widespread wrath from other opposition parties, appears to have opened a full-scale battlefront to corner the ruling party. It did not take the CBI raids on Sisodia lying down. In fact, it used the raids as an opportunity to launch one attack after another on the BJP.
First, its leaders attempted to reach out to the common people with the message that the BJP by targeting Sisodia, the education minister, and Satyendar Jain, the health minister, was only attempting to cripple the two most-important welfare measures that the Kejriwal government has initiated.
When Raghav Chaddha said that the CBI will only find “pencils and geometry boxes” at Sisodia’s home, or when Sanjay Singh or Kejriwal said that BJP was trying to buy AAP MLAs, they meant that the the CBI action will only amount to strip the capital’s people from the so-called “Delhi development model” that primarily hinges on providing free healthcare and education to the poor.
In fact, chief minister Kejriwal and his acolytes had already begun the offensive weeks ago when he was refused permission by the Union government to visit a Singapore government conclave to talk about the AAP’s development model. Its messaging was that an envious BJP doesn’t want to let a welfare-oriented opposition party claim any sort of political space.
Irrespective of whether there is merit to the CBI’s probe against Sisodia in the excise policy case, the AAP has spun the move as an anti-democratic attack by the BJP on a pro-poor government, the likely fallout of which will be a continuing battle between the two parties until the upcoming Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections. Both are states where AAP is eyeing a shot at power and working hard on the ground to at least finish as a respectable opposition party.
It has been fighting the BJP at every level, so much so that a good number of Congress workers on the ground are drifting towards it. AAP’s fighting spirit is drawing a large section of political workers outside the fold of the BJP, even as most other opposition parties have largely been complacent. Quite contrary to the allegation of being “BJP’s B-team” that AAP has had to face from many corners, it has shown a special perceptiveness to effectively counter the saffron party.
Its posturing is that of an anti-ideological and incorruptible force, driven by the immediate needs of people. It has carefully, but controversially, refrained from being drawn into traditional debates that has only strengthened the BJP over the last eight years. The denial to be clubbed with any form of traditional political parties has kept its novelty alive – even amidst the consistent growth of the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose leadership has successfully attracted a majority of the Hindu population in large parts of India. Like Modi, Kejriwal is also perceived as an outsider in a corrupt political system, and resultantly a fresh alternative to the BJP by a majority of people, not merely Hindus.
The only aspect in which the AAP lags behind the BJP is its limited presence in states – a factor that can enthuse people but not garner their votes at the moment. Both AAP and BJP know this well. Thus, AAP is striving hard to remain relevant and attract public attention.
It has refused to be drawn into polarising discussions, and at the same time foregrounded issues of the poor by highlighting economic inequalities in Indian society. It has spent crores in advertisements to highlight even its minutest of achievements – often half-truths – to publicise its “unique” governance model and capture the public imagination. In short, Kejriwal has tried to beat Modi at his own game. Of course, the scale of such an exercise is tilted in the BJP’s favour, given the unrestricted corporate support that the saffron party enjoys. However, what the AAP has done with its limited resources can’t remain unseen.
The BJP is well aware of AAP’s appeal among its own voter base. Its machinery has devised an effective way to counter the Congress in the long run. Of course, the lethargic top leadership of the Congress has only ended up aiding the already-effective propagation of BJP’s propaganda. In such a scenario, only AAP poses a political challenge to the BJP. By winning Punjab, AAP has only risen in the BJP’s threat perception. At the moment, only AAP is trying to break into the BJP’s vote share that in almost all states has consistently been more than 35%. Other opposition parties have only manoeuvered to consolidate their traditional vote bases. In that respect, only the AAP is playing the long game to attain an electoral edge over other opposition parties, especially in the Hindi heartland, in breaking the BJP’s strongholds. A lack of historical baggage gives it an added advantage.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: PTI/File
The seriousness with which the BJP looks at AAP can be seen in the umpteen Hindu Right social media platforms where each and every statement and move by Kejriwal or his partymen are sought to be countered with great alertness. The most recent example of such a trend was when rabid Hindu Right platforms claimed that Kejriwal had helped Rohingya Muslims in Delhi with shelter, education, healthcare and food supply. This campaign was organised after Kejriwal questioned the BJP’s doublespeak on the Rohingyas when Hardeep Singh Puri welcomed a government “directive” to shift the refugees to flats constructed by the Centre-run New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).
Kejriwal, in a way, laid a trap for the BJP – which has only made hateful comments against the refugees. Such was the retaliation among the Sangh parivar constituents that the Union home ministry had to retract its decision, clarify that it hadn’t given any such direction and claimed that the AAP government had proposed to shift the Rohingyas to the flats. Although Kejriwal’s statement irked many in the anti-BJP camp, the tug-of-war between AAP and BJP was surely a game of wits.
Not surprisingly, the all-dominant BJP has been at AAP’s back. It engineered a near coup in AAP’s Himachal Pradesh unit, while also slapping charges of money laundering against the party’s state-in-charge Satyendar Jain. At the same time, Prime Minister Modi and other leaders of the BJP have taken special care to appeal to Sikhs on different platforms after AAP registered a comprehensive win in Punjab.
And now, when both Sisodia and Kejriwal were making frequent trips to poll-bound Gujarat to put together a vibrant party unit, the BJP has all the reasons to beware – especially when it is battling high anti-incumbency arising out of more than two decades of staying in power. One can recall that the enthusiasm shown by AAP in Modi’s home state forced the prime minister to hit out at Kejriwal recently with the “revdi culture” jibe. AAP, perhaps, is the only opposition party that makes the BJP realise the limitations of its Hindu majoritarian (or consolidation) politics. The timing of raids on Sisodia could not have come at a more opportune moment for the BJP.
Kejriwal has upped the heat in the ensuing battle between the two parties by calling a special session of the Delhi assembly on Thursday. He has gone a step ahead to allege that BJP is plotting a coup in Delhi, indicating that he isn’t in the mood to settle scores as yet.
As far as the BJP goes, it has even enjoyed bad press in recent times – all of which has only made it stronger. However, with AAP on the other side this time around, the result may not be the same.
