Anil Anand
How to deal with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo, Arvind Kejriwal? This is the most disturbing question which the I.N.D.I.A (read Congress) combine of the opposition parties is faced with currently. The Congress and the combine may or may not admit, the opposition alliance hinges on AAP apart, though for different reasons, from Congress being its central hub.Be its political potency or potential to damage.
Even as the Congress particularly Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi is struggling hard to politically and electorally match Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, the most worrying factor for him should be Kejriwal’s enigmatic self. How to decipher the phenomena called Kejriwal?
This is the question which should trouble Congress and more so Mr Gandhi. All of Mr Kejriwal’s political moves seemed targeted Congress, and electorally help BJP. Whether it is by design or otherwise, is another debate. This trend has been noticed since AAP came into being and Mr Kejriwal became chief minister of Delhi, wiping out the Congress, subsequently to lose his crown to the BJP.
It is very simple for the Congress to describe AAP as the BJP’s ‘B’ team on account of muscle flexing by Kejriwal on opposition unity and having his own way in the state assembly elections and by-elections. In cases it has helped AAP victories and on the other hand also facilitated BJP’s poll wins at the cost of Congress and other opposition parties.
Amazingly, Congress, despite having drawn a naught in the Delhi assembly elections held recently, was celebrating Kejriwal-led AAP’s defeat in the fond hope that this has cleared the ground for the Grand-Old-Party’s (GOP’s) revival, and to help regain its lost ground. The subsequent developments including the GOP’s Delhi unit mysteriously going into a shell with reports that many of its top leaders being in contact with the BJP, has proved this short-lived joy to be a misnomer. It is another matter that reality has still not dawned on the party that it needed to take AAP head-on rather than performing a disappearing act.
Mr Kejriwal’s recent announcement to contest Bihar assembly elections on his own without having any truck with I.N.D.I.A of which Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress are the main constituents in the state, states the obvious. Whether it benefits AAP or not, it is certainly going to dent the opposition alliance to the benefit of the tottering BJP-led ruling NDA alliance which presently is in a none-too-happy position.
It was fallacious on the part of Congress to think that the AAP is done and dusted after Delhi defeat and that the GOP needed to entirely focus on BJP, leaving Mr Kejriwal free. His stand on Bihar elections and subsequent victories in Gujarat and Punjab assembly bi-elections, instead, should have acted as a wake-up call for the Congress and harped on a course correction.
Intriguingly, after Delhi debacle, Team Kejriwal has totally withdrawn. The silence is deafening and he is no more heard criticizing the Central dispensation particularly Mr Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah whom he had, earlier, blamed for instituting false cases of corruption against him for electoral gains. The BJP did return to power after 26 years thereby proving, in some measure, Mr Kejriwal’s charges right. The fact of the matter is that the case is still in the legal domain.
What intrigues most is that the silence of the Congress is more deep-seated and deafening when it comes to dealing with Mr Kejriwal. This is ill-advised and misplaced. Already decimated in Delhi with the organizational set-up in shambles and visibly no bid to revive, with the vested interest and BJP-AAP sleeper cells dominating on whatever is left in the GOP’s local unit, the leadership is shockingly convinced that things will automatically turn in their favour.
While Mr Kejriwal was simply let-off by the Congress strategists in Delhi, all their plans to corner the AAP’s Punjab Government by raising the issue of Punjabi pride on the pretext that chief minister Bhagwant Mann is a proxy and that the state was being ruled from Delhi, and that the key posts were being gifted to outsiders, fell flat. The AAP candidate’s convincing victory in Ludhiana assembly bi-election, despite hype and hoopla created by the Congress without any effort to control factional rumblings, is self-explanatory how miserably the GOP is placed.
Even a worst scenario prevailed in Gujarat where AAP defeated even the ruling BJP to win the bi-election. The Congress was more dismally placed here and secured a mere 5000 votes. An assembly bi-election outcome may or may not reflect on the party’s efforts at rejuvenation, but when it comes to AAP’s performance, it has a direct bearing on Congress and the opposition unity.
The Congress must shrug-off the misplaced feeling of “victory” in Mr Kejriwal’s defeat in Delhi. Instead, it must make a focused endeavour to sort out the enigma called Arvind Kejriwal. It is by now clear that he is not amenable to opposition unity without a key role that keeps him in contention for the leadership at the national levels. His decision to go alone in Bihar must force a serious thinking in Congress on how to deal with him.
First, the Congress leadership must clear its mind that ignoring Mr Kejriwal and AAP, and attacking only the BJP, is a flawed strategy. Cornering him in Delhi and also the neighbouring Punjab where he and his aides spend most of the time supervising Mr Mann’s Government, could be the possible way out. Or else, with no pressure on him in his home turf Delhi, where AAP was born, and giving a smooth passage to Punjab dispensation, will only embolden Mr Kejriwal to act in a manner to damage the Congress, which incidentally coincides with the BJP’s stated plan, and scuttle the opposition unity.
Ostensibly, the 57-year Mr Kejriwal has realized that the age is on his side. And that despite a debacle in Delhi, he has ample space to work out his political strategies for AAP’s expansion and the ultimate role which he wishes to play at the national level.
Despite BJP’s failure to secure even a simple majority in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Mr Modi still represents a strong political force. Rather than opposing, which could be one reason behind his studied silence against Modi-Shah duo, the ruling dispensation at the Centre, he is targeting Congress and more so Mr Gandhi to occupy a space to pose a direct challenge to Mr Modi in future.
Mr Kejriwal is merely two-year elder to Mr Gandhi. While the former has his strategies cleverly cut-out and crafted and with no challenge to his leadership, the latter is smarting under the burden of historic baggage represented by the old-guard which he is finding hard to off-load.
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