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AAP eyes 2015 Delhi Assembly election repeat but faces taller mountains

The BJP has again won all seven Lok Sabha seats in the capital — this time with a vote share of 56%. AAP’s vote share is down from 33% in 2014 to 18% now, leaving it a distant third and giving hope to the Congress that its vote bank is slowly, but surely, returning to the fold.

lok sabha election results, lok sabha election 2019 results, lok sabha elections bjp, BJP, AAP, Congress, arvind kejriwal, manoj tiwari, sheila dikshit, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at AAP headquarters. (Express photo: Praveen Khanna/File)

The year was 2014. Having won all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi with a 45% vote share, the BJP looked poised to repeat its performance in next year’s Assembly polls and come back to power in the capital after 15 years. It was also the time when the Aam Aadmi Party had resigned from the first government it formed with the Congress’s support. Having won 28 seats out of 70, the party had got the backing of Congress’s eight MLAs. AAP pulled out in January 2014 when the Lokpal Bill could not be passed in the Assembly.

When polls were finally held in Delhi in February 2015 — some believe the inordinate delay hurt the BJP — AAP swept 67 of 70 seats, leaving scraps for its rivals.

Five years on, AAP is hoping history repeats itself, its rivals hoping it won’t.

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The BJP has again won all seven Lok Sabha seats in the capital — this time with a vote share of 56%. AAP’s vote share is down from 33% in 2014 to 18% now, leaving it a distant third and giving hope to the Congress that its vote bank is slowly, but surely, returning to the fold. This is the first time since AAP’s inception that Congress has polled more votes than the party.

“In a way, we owe our formation to the Congress. Years of mismanagement and corruption brought the Anna Hazare andolan and anti-corruption movement. The mass of voters shifted to us — core Congress voters will never shift to the BJP, but with us they saw a viable alternative. This is what makes the Lok Sabha results more worrying,” said a senior party leader, who was involved with strategising.

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Data from Assembly segments suggests the Congress performed especially well in minority pockets — in five out of seven segments where the minority population is high, the Congress stood first. This includes Matia Mahal, Chandni Chowk, Ballimaran, Seelampur and Okhla. In the remaining two, Babarpur and Mustafabad, BJP’s Manoj Tiwari won but faced a tough challenge from Congress’s Sheila Dikshit.

That’s not all — AAP’s core voter base from unauthorised and JJ colonies appears to have shifted too. Areas such South Delhi’s Ambedkar Nagar, Deoli and Sangam Vihar, which had reposed faith in AAP last time, gave a thumping majority to the BJP. The script is the same in Narela, Kirari, Sultanpur Majra, where unauthorised colonies abound. This, despite the Chief Minister going on a month-long work inauguration spree in unauthorised colonies in February-March.

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AAP insists voters choose differently in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

Pegging the loss on the Modi factor, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told The Indian Express, “These results are not limited to Delhi. Look at the vote share in Himachal, where the BJP got around 70%. This is the Modi factor at play. But this was the national election. The voter understands this. In the Assembly elections, voters that have gone away will come back as they still believe in us…”

Messages sent to MLAs by party chief Arvind Kejriwal, however, suggest the party is looking to course correct. In a message to MLAs on WhatsApp, Kejriwal wrote: “All MLAs will have to work very hard, starting now. After talking to several MLAs, we have come to the conclusion that over the next 15 days, MLAs will have to hold small public meetings and tell voters that they have made mistakes and they will make up for them in Assembly polls.”

The BJP, on the other hand, is confident it has taken away a sizeable chunk of JJ cluster voters away from AAP for good. Umesh Verma, who heads the JJ cluster and slum cell of BJP’s Delhi unit, said voting pattern shows the BJP gained massively in these two areas. “We were able to communicate to the voter that if they voted for us, benefits they were being denied, such as the Ayushman Bharat Scheme, sanitation and housing, will be available to them,” said Verma who was head of the AAP’s JJ cluster cell between 2014 and 2017.

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This is where AAP hopes its legislators will be able to make a difference. “MLAs are the best people to showcase your work. If they are connected to people, half the battle is won. What we have going for us is that even when we were campaigning, people assured us they would vote for us in the Assembly polls…,” said AAP Mehrauli MLA Naresh Yadav.

The BJP, meanwhile, hopes to use the three civic bodies, which it governs, to its advantage. It has won the MCD polls thrice in a row but its governance has been marred by allegations of corruption, infighting and lack of funds. Delhi state unit chief Manoj Tiwari told The Indian Express: “Our focus will be on the civic bodies. There is a lot that remains to be done there.”

The Congress, meanwhile, appears to have decided it won’t go for a leadership change in Delhi, so it is likely Sheila Dikshit will helm the campaign. It is expected to meet this week to analyse the result and chalk out a strategy for Assembly polls.

“We have six months now to work on the mistakes that have happened in these elections. But the public has completely rejected AAP and the fight is now between the BJP and the Congress,” said DPCC spokesperson Jitender Kochhar.

First uploaded on: 27-05-2019 at 01:53 IST
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