Assembly elections 2013: AAP emerges as a formidable opponent in coming polls

By: Ashish Sharma
Seldom does a political party in India fight shy of making up for its deficit at the ballot with the wallet as the BJP has done in Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party has clearly changed the rules of the game. The BJP appeared damned if did not play by the new rules, but it appears equally damned now that it has decided to do so.

Had the BJP chosen to turn a blind eye to the political morality that the runner-up in the Delhi elections brought into play and got down to the task of garnering a majority any which way, it could have formed the government and hoped for a change in public sentiment down the road.

But this would have probably hurt the party’s prospects in the Lok Sabha elections, especially if the Aam Aadmi Party managed to scale up appreciably. BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, therefore, reportedly advised his party against this course of action. Modi is evidently prepared to lose the battle to win the war.

Some analysts have claimed that the BJP stands to gain if the party forces a re-election in Delhi. Their argument is based on a reading of the results which shows that the BJP won a majority of seats by a big margin while it lost others by few votes to the Aam Aadmi Party.

The popular mood in Delhi, however, suggests that it may be fallacious to assume a surge for the BJP anytime soon. There is a greater reason to believe that the section of the electorate which voted for BJP just because it did not fancy Aam Aadmi Party’s chances will not do so the next time.

Besides, many of those who voted for the Congress party because they wanted to keep BJP out could also shift to the Aam Aadmi Party. Some of the BJP’s newly-elected legislators in Delhi appear to have read the writing on the wall.

That is why they were reportedly in favour of supporting the Aam Aadmi Party rather than facing the electorate again. Narendra Modi is in an unenviable position. The Gujarat chief minister had successfully resuscitated the BJP and positioned himself as an alternative to the Congress leadership at the Centre.

Modi promised a steadier hand to replace sticky fingers at the till, a sharper vigil on the borders and a general overhaul of the central machinery. If he suddenly appears to cut a somewhat jaded and distant figure it is because for all his promise of efficiency he still represents an establishment figure while Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal offers a more alluring vision of a clean break from the bad old system to usher in a more participative democracy.

Kejriwal and his team are yet to prove themselves at governance, or be found out as their critics hope, but this can only make them a more formidable opponent in the coming elections.