AAP is the most notorious political party of India. The party is infamous for its puffery and U-turns. AAP was formed after the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement in 2011. The IAC led by Anna Hazare, supposedly began with the intention of bringing the unjust and scam-ridden politics of the then ruling Congress party to trial and passing the Jan Lokpal bill. Arvind Kejriwal, riding on his new found publicity, jumped in the fray for the Delhi assembly elections of 2013. The election was fought by Arvind Kejriwal against the Congress government in Delhi led by Sheila Dikshit. When BJP refused to form the government in Delhi following a hung assembly, it was Kejriwal who despite swearing on the lives of his children against it, joined forces with the Congress to form a government in Delhi. The infamous 49 day government soon fell, Kejriwal resigned and the subsequent elections gave him an outright majority. And with this, all his promises to file charges and prosecute the alleged scamsters of the Congress party vanished. The accusations stopped, never to be mentioned again. AAP’s soft approach towards the Congress was repeated in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, with Kejriwal using all his might and power to undermine the BJP and Narendra Modi. AAP managed to win only four seats in 2014 Lok Sabha elections but AAP portrayed as if they have 400 plus seats. Let’s look at their performance in 2014 general elections.
Aashish Chandorkar did a brilliant analysis of AAP’s disastrous performance in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In 2014 general elections, the AAP contested on 432 seats and it won four seats so its winnability per cent was 0.9 %. Only BSP (503) and the Congress (464) contested more seats than AAP. The BJP, the winner of the elections, contested only on 428 seats.
AAP showed good performance only in Delhi and Punjab. Except for these two places, Varanasi is the only constituency where the key leader of AAP, Arvind Kejriwal occupied the second position against BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. The party failed to open its account outside its influence areas. The AAP candidate mostly stood on the 5th rank. 47 candidates of AAP stood at 3rd. Only 6 of these 47 managed to save their deposit. Except on few constituencies of Punjab, AAP almost failed to make any impact on the electoral outcome of other parties. In it’s first-ever Lok Sabha election AAP’s all the big leader except Bhagwant Mann from Sangrur, Punjab failed to win any seat. Its big wigs failed to create any impact outside Delhi, Punjab and Chandigarh. Although Arvind Kejriwal came second in Varanasi, his performance was nowhere close to the rhetoric he generated and the media attention which he had received at last he ended up getting marginalized.
AAP got its 53.3% of all its votes from only 21 constituencies in Delhi, Punjab and Chandigarh. So AAP got 46.7% of its vote from the remaining 411 Lok Sabha constituencies. These figures are the testimony of AAP’s miserable performance. It also indicates that AAP failed to make any significant penetration across the country.
The reason behind its humiliating defeat is that the party was living in a fool’s paradise. It thought Delhi is India and India is Delhi. The party made inroads only in the areas around Delhi such as Punjab and Chandigarh.
Poor leadership: Its key party leaders were full of arrogance. They strongly believed that television limelight automatically translates into votes and seats. Every big leader tasted humiliating defeat. This was bound to happen as none of them had any ground connection, they were completely divorced from the ground reality. Its bigwigs were behaving less as a politician on leader and more as Bollywood star. And they ended up paying the price of their high horse attitude by tasting humiliating defeats.
In one go party thought it could win the entire country just marauders Mongol used to do. The party’s decision to venture into areas where it had no presence also resulted in harming the party’s prospects.
Its first-time rhetoric also failed to yield any significant result. The party managed to get only 2.1 % vote share its first attempt which is not at all a good performance if compared with other first-timers.
Earlier Swatantra Party, which contested election for the first time in 1962 got 6.8% national vote share and won 18 Lok Sabha seats. Janata Dal came to existence in 1988 and ended up winning 143 seats in its first Lok Sabha election in 1989. Just like AAP, YSR Congress party which contested its first Lok Sabha election in 2004 got 2.2% vote share. Unlike AAP, YSRCP contested on just 42 seats. So, what AAP did is neither new nor extraordinary. The overall conclusion is that AAP’s grand plans for 2014 never materialized.
But, the party refused to learn any lessons from the Lok Sabha episode and continued burying its head in the sand. In the state assembly elections, except Punjab, the party failed to leave its mark in any other state. The party failed miserably in Goa state assembly elections. It got only 6.3 percent of the popular vote across the state. It was not even in the main fight. Its Chief Ministerial candidate Elvis Gomes came fourth in his Cuncolim constituency. AAP delivered such a horrible performance despite Goa being a small state. It shows that AAP has no influence outside Delhi.
AAP, to some extent, established some presence in Punjab. In 117- member Punjab assembly, the AAP won 20 seats. However, its most of the seats came from relatively urbanized Malwa region. AAP won 18 seats in the Malwa region. During election campaign AAP launched blistering attack against both the Congress and the BJP, and also boasted about winning more than 100 seats however their predictions went horribly wrong and after few years of their little success in Punjab now the party is increasingly becoming irrelevant in the state. After making a successful debut in 2014 Lok Sabha election in Punjab, now, AAP is on the verge of extinction in the state. In the recent Shahkot Punjab by-poll, AAP lost its deposits. AAP had gotten only 1900 votes, just 632 votes more than NOTA. In Shahkot constituency, in 2017 AAP had secured 41,000 votes about thousand less than Congress which had secured 42,008. In 2017, in the Gurdaspur parliament by-election also AAP suffered a similar fate and lost the deposit. It secured only 25,000 votes whereas in 2014 Lok Sabha elections it had received 1.77 Lakh votes. After its puffery of winning 100 seats in the 2017 Punjab Assembly elections, AAP continued its horrible performance in Punjab Municipal elections also. There is a severe infighting going on in AAP Punjab unit. Animosity between Punjab AAP unit and the Central unit is only rising. Senior leaders of the party are leaving the party and joining the other parties or forming their own party. Hans Raj Rana from Adampur and H S Walia from Jalandhar Cantt left and joined Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD). Senior leaders leaving AAP is another huge blow for a party which has been in decline ever since its big victory in Delhi.
The AAP suffered shellacking in Gujarat state assembly elections also. The party got total 24,918 votes. The party in Gujarat contested on 30 seats however it focused mainly on ten seats where the party was hoping for a victory.
Let’s take a quick look at How AAP Performed on those seats:
1.) Palanpur: Nabhani Rameshkumar Khemrajbhai (452 votes)
2.) Rajkot (East): Ajit Ghusabhai Lokhil (1927 votes)
3.) Gondal: Khunt Nimishaben Dhirajlal (2179 votes)
4.) Lathi: MD (Bhanubhai) Manjariya (797 votes)
5.) Kamrej: Ram Dhaduk (1454 votes)
6.) Karanj: Mehta Jignesh Dhirajlal (325 votes)
7.) Pardi: Dr Rajiv Shambhunath Pandey (539 votes)
8.) Dhrangadhra: Dadhaniya Kamlesh Muljibhai (505 votes)
A very poor scorecard, one must say. But one must also salute the courage and undying spirit of Shri Arvind Kejriwal. He is a fighter who loves a good fight. Results seldom worry him.
After Gujarat elections, the AAP got shellacked in North East state assembly elections. Most of its candidates lost their deposits. After the drubbing in the North-east, the AAP shifted its focus to Karnataka assembly elections. In Karnataka, the same old picture repeated itself again. Its candidates lost deposits in all the seats they contested. The party contested on 29 seats and managed to get only 21,000 votes. AAP should learn that sound and fury are not enough to make large inroads in alien places.
Now, it looks like the party has learned something from its successive electoral defeats. AAP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh announced that AAP is planning to contest on 100 seats in 2019 General Elections that too around the area of its influence that is Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. He said, “The party feels that there is no point fighting in all seats. So, plans are to contest around 80 to 100 seats where we are in a better position to influence the results.” He also said that the party will field some candidates in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the 2019 general elections. He further added that the AAP is planning to field some of its candidates in UP and Bihar also.
It looks like finally, some sense has prevailed but it would be interesting to see how much success this strategy would bring at a time when the popularity of AAP is continuously deteriorating and no one is ready to accommodate AAP in the grand-alliance against the BJP and PM Modi. There are many reasons why no wants to align with Kejriwal’s party.
First, Kejriwal is not the person on whom anyone can trust. He can do anything for power. He kicked out his friends from the party just for the sake of power. Time and again Kejriwal has proved to be too mercurial and changes decision based on whims and fancies.
Second, Kejriwal is loose cannon, with absolutely no control on his rhetoric. He is not the type of person on who whom alliance partners can trust in tough times.
Third, Kejriwal’s popularity is declining.
Because of Arvind Kejriwal AAP is increasingly becoming a political pariah in the Indian politics. Rahul Gandhi didn’t even contact Arvind Kejriwal to seek AAP’s support for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman elections. Given all these reasons it is no exaggeration to say that the party might end up losing all the 100 seats this time. The end of youth’s romance with Kejriwal is one more reason to believe this would happen. Now no longer can play the role of spoil-sport. As the saying goes, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” AAP losing all the 100 seats is a real scenario.