AAP and Congress had been blaming each other for the failure of the two parties to form an alliance in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Some political analysts had been arguing that if the two parties had come together. However, all such analysts have been proven wrong. BJP has managed to stage a clean sweep in Delhi winning all the seven seats while Rahul Gandhi-led Congress and Kejriwal-led AAP failed to open their account.
Delhi CM Kejriwal had been relentlessly arguing that if the two parties came together they would be able to overcome PM Narendra Modi. Kejriwal based his argument on the basis of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. According to him, the BJP’s vote share was 46 percent in 2014 and the combined vote share of AAP and the Congress stood at 48 percent. His arithmetic and logic were simple. However, the Election Commission data has proved Kejriwal wrong.
As per the election data, BJP alone managed to far exceed their vote share. In all the seven constituencies, the BJP candidates not only won emphatically, but they also polled greater vote share than the vote share of the AAP and the Congress candidates combined. In fact, if we go by the data available on the Election Commission website, all the BJP candidates have secured more than half the number of votes cast in their constituencies. This means that the AAP or Congress did not stand even an outside chance, with or without an alliance.
The fact that AAP has shifted to number three position on most of the constituencies goes on to show how quickly electoral dynamics have changed in Delhi. The Kejriwal-led party had managed to win on 67 out of 70 assembly seats during the assembly elections held in 2015. However, it seems that four years down the line it has completely lost out on popularity.
Delhi’s case serves as a critical message for the entire opposition. While the Modi government was banking on its developmental pitch in order to come back into power, parties like the AAP were banking on unholy alliances and specific religion and caste combinations in order to topple the Modi government. The latter did not really resonate with the voters. Indian politics has undergone a sea change. Crafty alliances and social vote bank politics can no longer do the trick. Perform or perish is the order of the day.
