Delhi excise policy case: Taint gone, can AAP regain its mojo?

New Delhi: Ahead of the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls, the muffler-man image makeover of a wheezing, coughing Arvind Kejriwal into a broom-in-hand anti-corruption crusader was first articulated through a poster inspired by a dark-fantasy Hollywood film, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Returns.

The transformation, from activist to politician, stood the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in good stead for 10 years, giving the insurgent political startup two consecutive terms in office in Delhi and a mammoth victory in Punjab in 2022.

But sustaining power is far more complex than its acquisition. Politically and legally, the Delhi excise policy case was the biggest challenge AAP faced in its decade-and-a-half of existence. Coupled with allegations of exorbitant expenditure incurred by the AAP government in the renovation of the Delhi CM’s residence, Kejriwal lost the plot in the 2025 Delhi Assembly polls, failing to retain even his own seat.

The AAP convenor, who, with fellow CM from Punjab Bhagwant Mann, would jet-set across the country to participate in the I.N.D.I.A alliance meeting, was grounded in one fell swoop. Almost a year into hibernation, the redemption has now come in the form of discharge in the excise policy case. Ergo, the future of AAP, and particularly its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, begs a few questions.

To analyse AAP and its stunning rise in Indian politics, one has to capture, with a wide-angle lens, the political milieu at the end of the first decade of the new millennium.

Public trust in the state and its agencies was abysmally low. Both elected leaders in liberal Western democracies and authoritarian regimes, ringfenced by cabals in different measures and contexts, were blighted by corruption. Discredited, they grasped for political legitimacy, offering vast space for anyone willing to rush in.

Occupy Wall Street protests in the US emerged out of the subprime crisis. In 2010, protests in Tunisia against three decades of dictatorship were triggered by the self-immolation of a street vendor.

The insurgent political movement in Western Europe also emerged out of the growing frustration and disappointment with conventional politics.

In Italy, Beppe Grillo, a comedian, formed the Five-Star Movement to secure 25% of the votes in the 2013 elections. In Spain, the anti-austerity party, Podemos (Spanish: We Can) was founded in 2013 by a professor of political science. In two years, it was able to capture almost 21% of the popular vote in general elections.

Like AAP, most of these political movements thrived on general apathy towards rigid and impervious power structures, growing economic disparity, and corruption.

AAP emerged from the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption movement. Like others in the league, though low on resources, it was nimble on its feet to optimise the use of new connective action plans in the digital world to communicate with the people, while the legacy parties continued to rely on traditional collective mechanisms for political mobilisations.

AAP, Podemos, and Five Star were all ‘outsiders’ which had entered the fray to cleanse the systemic rot. After 10 years in power, how do people perceive them? ‘Outsiders’ or part of the same political system?

Ten years ago, when Kejriwal and his associates picked up the broom to start a unique experiment in Indian politics, the Congress was up against 10 years of anti-incumbency at the Centre. This was further compounded by 15 years of Sheila Dikshit’s rule in the national capital.

In the Delhi Assembly polls, AAP was the immediate beneficiary of the anti-Congress sentiment. Across the country, the BJP, which had both organisational and political depth to capitalise on the anger against the Congress, benefited the most.

The Congress was the loser in both cases.

Which is why Congress’s Pawan Khera, the media advisor to Sheila Dikshit, was quick to react to Kejriwal’s discharge in the excise policy case. It’s an attempt to weaken the Congress in Punjab and Gujarat, he alleged, by reviving AAP to split anti-BJP votes.