Anil Anand
a.anil.anand@gmail.com
It will be a misnomer, in the current political context, to call desertion by seven Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs to join Bharatiya Janata Party, as an internal matter of the party. The quick descent of the party is directly proportional to its quick ascent following capturing power in Delhi by unseating Sheila Dikshit-led strong Congress Government and later unexpectedly in Punjab.
If the quick rise was surprising, the downward trend, subsequently losing Delhi (AAP’s mainstay and foundation) to a leaderless (Delhi local) BJP and glaringly reflected by the Raghav Chadha-engineered defections thereby shaking it’s Punjab government, is astonishing though not unexpected. It has serious political connotations for the I.N.D.I.A combine and more so Congress which has been the sufferer at the hands of AAP which has been eating into its support-base to the benefit of the BJP.
Ever since AAP founder and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his close confidant Manish Sisodia faced corruption allegations in the excise (liquor) scam, Mr Chadha, the Rajya Sabha MP, had become indifferent to the crisis hitting his party. Same was true of his six other fellow Rajya Sabha MPs who are all either celebrities or representing money-bags with not even an iota of connection with ground-politics.
When he should have been hitting the ground to protest against the arrest of both Mr Kejriwal and Mr Sisodia, the former Finance Minister of Delhi, he quietly flew to London with his film-star wife by his side. It created serious doubts about Mr Chadha’s intentions and motives.
Whether Mr Kejriwal was aware that Mr Chadha was quietly working, in tandem with top BJP leaders, to engineer defections in the AAP’s Upper House ranks, is still not known. If he was aware and could not control the situation, or if he was caught totally unaware, in either case it is portending his losing grip on the totally monolithic and one-man driven party.
Ostensibly drunk on political power and riding high on arrogance, which his former colleagues describe as his basic trait, Mr Kejriwal, perhaps, had lost sight of the emerging issues and problems. His shenanigans including transformation from a muffler-wrapped “aam aadmi” to an aristocrat and ignoring trusted party-persons for Rajya Sabha to favour “popular” persons, seems to have done him in.
Has he paid for his over-confidence? Did he ignore the prying eyes of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine even while he was chief minister of Union Territory of Delhi which is under the direct control of Union Home Ministry, while preferring to raise his political fortune out of confrontation rather than try and workout a coordinated approach like Mr Dikshit?
Although AAP under his leadership secured a landslide win in the 2022 Punjab assembly elections defeating both Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal, he seemed to be continuing with his dictatorial-style. Nominating outsiders and non-political persons to Rajya Sabha, mostly from Punjab quota, has ultimately created serious crisis for him as they have all shown their back to him and made a common cause with Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo.
As Punjab will face assembly elections in 2027, this crisis has come at a wrong time for him. However, it has been perfectly timed and allegedly engineered by the BJP strategists. The saffron party despite having no feet to stand in the state has pulled all stops including undemocratic means to attract “talent” from opposition parties. The main players in Punjab politics, the Congress and the AAP, are the BJP’s prime targets.
There are two aspects of the AAP’s current crisis- political and legal. The jury is still not out on the legality of Chadha-led defection of Rajya Sabha MPs to BJP, whether the merger of the party by a section of the MPs is constitutionally and legally valid, or that it is valid only if the parent party and not the legislatures merge with another party. As seen in the case of Mr Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party- the case is pending before both Election Commission of India and Supreme Court- where the claims of the parent party have been ignored. The legal-constitutional battle, if and when started, will have to follow a long course as per the current systemic norms.
A crisis in a political party always opens a window of an opportunity for the rivals. The BJP, which has been instrumental in creating crisis in the AAP is already on it squarely with an eye on Punjab assembly elections as they have already got the better of Mr Kejriwal in Delhi with Congress after that showing no hurry at redemption and getting pushed to the backdrop.
More than the BJP the current AAP imbroglio has provided a floodgate of an opportunity to Congress to waylay team-Kejriwal and corner them in Punjab and Delhi. Having already lost Delhi and crisis-ridden in Punjab, the Congress could not have expected anything better than this to corner AAP. But there are many ifs and buts and more importantly whether the grand old party has the will to do it?
Apart from Delhi and Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir is another territory where Mr Kejriwal had initially tried to set base and had even got public-traction only to lose interest sooner than expected as he shifted his priority to more fertile Punjab. With the release of its first-ever MLA in the Union Territory, Mehraj Malik from jail after J&K High Court had annulled his arrest under the draconian Public Safety Act, the scenario could change fast. And more so because Mr Malik is a young and dynamic political leader, who had won election on his own, and an excellent speaker, the AAP could be back on track in J &K.
The Congress must shrug its lethargy and focus on reshaping its party units in Delhi, Punjab and J &K. The common problem with the three PCCs is the lackluster chiefs failing to control factionalism and on top of that refusing to change their style of functioning to take everyone on board. On top of that the party high command has preferred to simply look the other way round as the PCC heads have almost completed two listless years in office.
Every political movement and subsequent change has started from Delhi and in the olden days Ramlila Maidan played the historic host. In this case even the AAP was born and flourished in Delhi before it spread to some other states. The prime victim of its flourish has been the Congress. Not only in Delhi and Punjab but in states where Congress has been in direct contest with BJP and the APP playing a spoil sport to ultimately help the saffron party.
Under the circumstances it is imperative for the Congress to re-energise itself in these three areas. Delhi should be the top priority being the national capital and centre of the political-pond as any change here has a ripple effect in rest of the country. Apart from changes in the state/UT units Mr Rahul Gandhi should ensure that senior leaders act as facilitators and not impeders.
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