Pavan K. Varma | BJP convinced Delhi voters it was futile to support AAP

There are five take-aways from the recent Assembly elections in Delhi. The first is that the BJP was determined this time to take control over the state. This ambition had stubbornly eluded it. The last time BJP had its own chief minister (CM) in Delhi was in 1998, 26 years ago. That was Sushma Swaraj, but she was CM only for 52 days. Prior to her, Madan Lal Khurana and Sahib Singh Verma, were in the chair. All in all, the BJP has been in the saddle in Delhi for only five years, from 1993 to 1998.

In 1998, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress Party stormed to power, and remained undefeated for 15 years, until 2013. That year, the BJP with 31 seats, emerged as the single largest party in the 70-seat Assembly, five short of a clear majority. The mandate was clearly in its favour, but its ambitions were thwarted by a wobbly coalition between the AAP with 28 seats and the Congress with eight. Expectedly, the government did not last, and President’s Rule was imposed.

Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP was the giant killer in the 2015 elections. He won 67 of the 70 seats, while the BJP was crushed to just three. The Congress was wiped out. The BJP could never digest such a humiliating setback in the national capital, especially after Narendra Modi had won an absolute majority in Parliament just the year before. In the next elections in 2020, AAP replicated its stupendous performance, winning 62 of the 70 seats, while the BJP could only marginally improve its tally to eight. This was like rubbing salt in the wounds of a resurgent BJP, which had won all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi, both in 2014 and 2019.

It was clear ever since that AAP’s hegemony in Delhi was going to face a severe challenge. Mr Kejriwal even showed the audacity of politically entering Gujarat, the citadel of both Mr Modi and Amit Shah. His party’s victory in Punjab in 2022 only reinforced the BJP’s resolve to defeat him in Delhi, and it planned this with relentless and meticulous focus. The strength of the party’s cadre, especially that of the RSS, was evident. And, the announcement of the Eighth Pay Commission, and the Union Budget’s sops to the middle class, just a few days before voting in Delhi, were master-strokes for the city’s large middle and salaried classes.

Secondly, and far more importantly, the BJP created a situation where even many of those opposed to it recognised the futility of supporting AAP. They realised that an AAP government will face unending hurdles in implementing its promises. This is because Delhi is a Union territory, where significant powers (police, public order, and land) lie with the lieutenant governor (LG) appointed by the Centre. As has been evident, the LG is not well disposed to the AAP dispensation. Most proposals emanating from the elected government need his approval, and these are either negatived, or cleared only after inordinate delay. Moreover, the AAP government does not now even have control over bureaucrats, including the chief secretary, serving under it.

By an executive order of May 2015, the Union home ministry placed the vital powers of services also under the control of the LG. This meant that the elected chief minister (CM) lost control over the appointment, transfers and postings of officers reporting to him. The AAP government challenged this usurpation in court. After eight years, in May 2023, the matter came up before a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court (SC), which struck down the executive order. But the Central government overruled the SC’s judgement by an ordinance. With no powers over its own bureaucrats, an unsympathetic governor, and Central agencies like the CBI, ED and I-T targeting the party leadership, what could an AAP government do for the people of Delhi, even if elected?

Mr Kejriwal did not make it any easy for himself by his party’s alleged involvement in the liquor scam, and the “sheesh mahal” he built for himself, after public avowals earlier in his political career that he would live the life of an “aam aadmi”. But all this notwithstanding, the simple truth is that we are now in a situation, where an Opposition government in the Delhi Assembly will find it close to impossible to function. It is a tribute to the strategy of the BJP, that it could make even supporters of AAP wonder whether it would not be better for the city to have a “double-engine” sarkar.

Thirdly, the real miracle is that, in spite of such odds, AAP managed to get a vote percentage of 43.7 per cent. Of course, this was a steep drop from the 53.57 per cent vote it got in 2020. But a nearly 44 percentage support for a losing party, against the BJP’s marginally higher 45.46 per cent (a substantial rise from the 38.51 per cent it got in 2020), shows that the AAP still has sizeable support in the capital, especially among those below the middle class. Our first past the post system ensures that this less than two per cent difference can lead to a huge hiatus in seats: BJP 48 to AAP’s 22.

Fourthly, the Delhi elections has convincingly shown that far from being the leader of the Opposition alliance, the Congress has become its Achilles heel. In Haryana, it did not join hands with the AAP; and in Delhi, it fought against AAP, although both parties are part of one national alliance! Predictably, the Congress did not win a single seat, with the overwhelming majority of its candidates forfeiting their deposit. But it hived off 6.34 per cent of the vote, which could have gone against the BJP should the two parties have fought together, possibly ensuring an entirely different result.

Fifthly, this election, like many before, has shown that the BJP is the luckiest party in our recent democratic history in terms of the abysmal quality of its Opposition. In state after state, its political opponents are at each other’s throats, rather than united against their publicly declared common opponent. This is the special vardaan that Narendra Modi is blessed with.