AAP sheds 'Delhi party' tag, brooms Congress in Punjab, looks at national spread
The story of this edition of Assembly election is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – the Arvind Kejriwal-led party that has spread its wing beyond Delhi for the first time with a result in Punjab that catapults its national ambitions to a new height.
After an attempt that fell way behind five years ago, the AAP has finally managed to convince people in Punjab to give them a chance to repeat what they did in the national capital.
For the AAP, the immediate benefit of the thumping victory in Punjab, which almost all exit polls predicted, will be shedding the ‘Delhi party’ tag. The Punjab result will add more political heft to the nine-year-old party that had pushed Congress into political irrelevance in the national capital.
AAP has shown Congress that it is a formidable opponent outside Delhi too. Punjab will be its first full state to rule and AAP leaders believe this would give people in other states the confidence to look at their party in a different light and consider it as a party of governance.
It will also raise AAP’s stature in the Opposition ranks, which is now led by the Congress, and brings Kejriwal to a prominent seat at the Opposition table and at par with leaders like Mamata Banerjee and K Chandrasekhar Rao who are looking at a non-Congress Opposition platform to take on the BJP. It is also inching closer towards securing national party status, as it wins two seats in Goa and a better vote share in Uttarakhand.
As results poured in, AAP leaders have started making claims of Kejriwal as Prime Ministerial material and some even setting a ten year deadline for it to become a reality. With the Trinamool Congress faring badly in Goa, where it entered with big claims and poaching of Congress leaders, the stock of AAP has grown and it has a head start when it comes to national ambitions.
"In the coming days AAP will become a national force...the party will emerge as the national and natural replacement of Congress," AAP’s Punjab in-charge and Delhi MLA Raghav Chadha said.
The result will also have a positive impact for AAP in states like Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, where polls are due, as well as states like Goa, Uttarakhand and Haryana. AAP has already made its mark in Surat municipal elections and Gujarat is on its radar for the past couple of years.
The victory will also bring out an interesting anomaly – Kejriwal will be chief minister of a ‘half state’ while Bhagwant Mann will have more powers than his party chief in a state the party rules.
Punjab has been on AAP radar since its inception in 2013 and it started on a solid foot by winning four Lok Sabha seats in 2014. Three years later, it was the favourite on social media to win the state but ended up bagging just 20 seats with a vote share of 23.72%.
Opposition had started to write off the AAP in Punjab with the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as it managed to win just one seat. But by then Kejriwal had learnt from the mistakes they made in 2017 by giving an impression that he will be Punjab Chief Minister.
Punjab voters also did not fall to a campaign against Kejriwal that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Khalistani supporters. In 2017, Kejriwal's certain moves on those lines had worked against him.
The first thing Kejriwal did during his 21 June, 2021 visit to Amritsar, the first to Punjab with an eye on election, was to declare that AAP would declare a Sikh as its chief ministerial candidate. Early this year, he announced Mann as the chief ministerial face though the comedian-turned-politician had played his card well to ensure the announcement. In his second visit on June 29, he made the second definite poll pitch – promise of free power up to 300 units.
Aided by party in-charge Raghav Chadha, the Delhi Chief Minister made a series of poll tours in Punjab in the run up to the election and managed to convince them that they would see a repeat of Delhi model of governance.
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