‘BJP
Juggernaut derailed’, ‘Delhi rebuffs Modi’, ‘a message from above’ — just some
of the slogans that have been bandied around in the wake of the AAP winning 67
of the Legislative Assembly’s 70 seats against three for the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
AAP,
or Common Man’s Party, was formed just over two years ago and is led by the charismatic
Arvind Kejriwal. It did well in its first electoral test, the Delhi election of
2013 and formed a short-lived minority government in a hung Parliament.
Unable
to get his legislative program through Kejriwal resigned, bringing on the latest
poll.
In
between AAP made little impact in the 2014 national election, winning just four
seats as the BJP swept to power.
As
commentator Rajdeep Sardesai has pointed out, Delhi is not India and an
election for 70 Assembly seats in a city-state cannot be compared to the
conquest of the country.
“It
would be a grave mistake to expect Kejriwal to become a magnet for anti-Modi
forces, or for the AAP to now challenge the BJP in other parts of the country,”
Sardesai says.
The
AAP must also try to shed the image that it is a one-man band. Beyond Kejriwal
it contains few well-known political figures and in the days since the poll
newspapers and television channels have constantly referred to “Kejriwal’s victory”
mentioning his party almost as an afterthought.
Having
said that, a healthy democracy needs an effective Opposition and that is not
being mounted by the Congress Party, which Modi and the BJP ousted so
comprehensively from Government last May.
As
an example, up to the 2013 election Congress was the Government in Delhi. Today
it is shut out of the Assembly, failing to win as single seat. As the AAP
matures it is clear it will be occupying a centre-left position in Indian
politics, once the preserve of Congress.
It
is not the BJP that has the most to fear from the emergence of Kejriwal and AAP
as a new force on the political scene.
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