Jubilee Post News & Views
Vivek Avasthi
They say that someone’s failure proves lucky for the others or in political terms related to the elections of Delhi, someone’s partial success may prove lucky for others. Well, the Congress party is in the waiting game as far as criticism of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party is concerned.
At the moment, elections for Mini India or Delhi seem to be a tough battle fought out between the AAP and the BJP with the latter going on all out criticism of AAP and Kejriwal. Senior BJP leaders have left no stone unturned in terming AAP as anti-national, supporter of Shaheen Bagh protestors, supporter of Sharjeel Imam, Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and moreover, the ‘Tukde-Tukde’ gang.
The Aam Aadmi Party led by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, has its own reasons to have chosen not to hit back and avoid making these subjects core election issues. Instead, it is just propogating and relying on the development plank, giving thrust to the work it has done in Delhi in the last five years.
But why is the Congress, which ruled Delhi for fifteen years in a row till 2013 and a party which was decimated to a big zero in Delhi in 2015 elections, is not as lethal in its campaign towards the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, is coming as a big surprise to many. Perhaps, the grand old party of Indian politics has its own reasoning and strategy behind this.
The Rise of AAP in Delhi 2013 saw the rise of the newly born political outfit Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi. In the elections which took place in that year, the then lesser known AAP took everyone by storm by winning 28 seats out of the 70 seats of Delhi Assembly. The BJP won 34, two short of majority but could not form government as it could not garner support of two MLAs.
Aam Aadmi Party formed the government under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal but only with outside support of nine Congress MLAs. With the outside support of the Congress, Kejriwal was sworn as the seventh chief minister of Delhi on December 28, 2013.
But the honeymoon ended soon when just after a 49-day stint, Arvind Kejriwal resigned as chief minister on February 14, 2014. The Assembly was kept under suspended animation and President’s Rule was imposed. Later, fresh elections were held in 2015, in which AAP won a landslide 67 out of 70 seats.
Is Congress waiting for another ‘sort of Maharashtra’ to happen?
The party has weakened to a great extent as compared to the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2014. The emergence of Narendra Modi as a national leader and having no great face in its fold after the demise of its three-time chief minister Sheila Dixit, the Congress is not as offensive against the Aam Aadmi Party as it used to be initially.
The recently concluded Maharashtra Assembly election is a glaring example. The BJP being the largest single party with 105 seats, had to sit out of power as its pre-poll ally Shiv Sena, which won 56 seats, choose to part ways with the BJP on the issue of power sharing in the state.
The Nationalist Congress Party led by Sharad Pawar won 54 seats and the Congress bagged 44 seats. It was the outcome of the bitter feud between the BJP and the Shiv Sena that the Sena choose to leave its old-time ally and form government in the state with the NCP and the Congress. And the NCP and the Congress, both came out of the blue to be partners in the coalition government out of sheer chance after the bitter parting of BJP and Shiv Sena.
With the intense campaign of the BJP against the AAP on grounds of nationalism etc., the Congress is perhaps waiting to see the outcome of the results of Delhi Assembly on February 11. And if at all, there is a great decline in the number of seats to the Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress would certainly be waiting in the wings to support the Aam Aadmi Party and be a part of the new Delhi Government of 2020.
(The Writer is a Senior Journalist)
