The election results for Delhi, which returned the BJP to the government after 27 years, can be summarised in one row. AamAadmi voted against the leadership of the Aam Aadmi party, but not necessarily against the idea of the AAP. There is no other explanation when many top leaders, including Arvind Kejwal, who made the election a referendum for themselves, lose their seats, but the decline in AAP seats was reflected in a reasonable decrease in vote share. It wasn’t there. Stone’s BJP throw.
The BJP has proven that elephants can dance. He was agile enough to tweak his strategy to make Delhi elections both local and nationally. Congress was slightly helped by increasing the defeat of Kejriwal by prioritizing the BJP over defeating the BJP in order to protect political future security from intruders.
If there is one thing politicians can learn from the AAP fiasco, it is to avoid hub arrogance and excessive housing. The BJP got a taste of a cocky blow in the election of Lok Sabha, but it wasn’t a lame blow. Currently, Kejwal is facing a complete election backlash, leaving Delhi’s government and has gained national fame.
Kejwal lost for two main reasons, except for hub arrogance. One saw that, thanks to the alcohol scandal and heavy spending on his official home, voters might not be the one he claimed to the men they voted for (poor, anti-corruption crusades). . It is not a crime for a commercial to have a moderately well-equipped housing, but it violates Kejwal’s well-cultivated image of living the life of Aam Aadmi. He made things worse for himself, among other things, by making wild claims about Haryana trying to poison the seas of Delhi. No voters like to see his future commercials sound a bit indifferent.
The BJP tried to consolidate the middle class vote without losing any other segments. Delhi is India’s major middle class city. The Budget Tax SOP was helpful.
Delhi has two attributes that contribute to political hub arrogance. As a capital, anyone who carries out it will attract the attention of the people. Second, as a city-state with high revenue but only a fraction of the cost of running the state, it gives it the freedom to use these resources to offer endless freebies to elect oneself. Unlike regular states, Delhi does not have to pay for two very large spending areas in most states: policing and pensions.
Kejwal misused these benefits. He spent hundreds of crawls in other states using earnings surplus (now largely gone) for freebies and self-promotion by printing front pages and publishing primetime television ads. I did. Why do men who run a prosperous city-state need to spend taxpayer money elsewhere?
Hubris began shortly after the Assembly victory in 2015, when his party won 67 of Delhi’s 70 seats. Kejwal began to see himself as a potential PM and used Delhi resources to project himself from that perspective. In Delhi, he had no portfolio and therefore left the actual job of running real jobs to Manish Sisodia and other ministerial colleagues. Clearly, his focus was much more on his mayoral work in Delhi and more on his move up the next national political ladder.
For those without Kejriwal’s overfusion, the high revenues of Delhi could have been used to truly improve the status of primary and secondary education and basic healthcare. And at first, this certainly was the focus of his party, and some real changes seem to have begun in these areas. However, it was not conveyed to be a viable model suitable for replication elsewhere. Kejwal’s model was not useful for anyone except to make free power and water the basic poll advances needed to win elections into free power and water. These questionable ideas were used to win the Punjab Assembly elections, but the state does not have the resources to maintain such a giveaway endlessly.
Kejwal also played his politics poorly, losing his allies along the way. He saw himself as the national alternative to the BJP and Modi, although this could only be possible at the expense of Congress, which controlled a much larger state than Delhi. This contributed to his election loss as Congress realized that the AAP was a threat to the height of the nation and tried to weaken it.
Delhi’s defeat should bring Kejwal down to Earth. If he really reflects, he will put out a much better politician. He should first do the hard work of creating his policy and potential beyond Delhi, without using the giveaway as his only calling card. He is politically savvy that only bounces off if he abandons hubris. Contrary to his own assumptions, he – yet – is not a God’s gift to India. There is still brand salience in AAP, but this time I wasted it.
For the BJP, a test of good governance begins. If any state can be with double engine Sarkar, it’s half-state in Delhi.
