AAP's poll concerns behind doorstep ration delivery

In crucial 2022, the AAP needs an issue to keep its urban poor support base faithful to the party

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), one of India's most successful political startups, has an unenviable task at hand in 2022. But, first, it needs to protect its turf in Delhi, which is due for crucial civic body polls next year and expand beyond Delhi in the seven Assembly polls slated in 2022.

It is a coincidence that the only other successful political startup of recent times, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), faces a similar predicament. Existential crisis confronts both these parties in their respective home turfs. Both are also looking at the electorate in Punjab to bail them out of the situation.

The BSP will battle for its survival in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. At the same time, the AAP hopes it consolidates its footprint in Delhi by winning the civic body polls.

In Punjab, the BSP has allied with the Akalis. The AAP hopes to improve upon its 2017 Assembly polls performance in that state when it had relegated the Akalis to the number three spot and emerged the principal Opposition party.

Both would be looking to cut into the support base of the Congress to do well in Punjab, while AAP can do well if only it gnaws at the Congress support base in such poll-bound states like Uttarakhand, Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat as well.

But unlike the BSP, which at 37 years looks to be in terminal decline, the AAP at only eight years old is a more potent fighting force. It is the only party since 2014 to have stopped the BJP juggernaut not once but twice (defeating the BJP in 2015 and 2020 in Delhi).

To the AAP's advantage, it currently holds the reins of the Delhi government. So it is hopeful the talk of its 'good governance' in Delhi would resonate in the Delhi civic polls and other poll-bound states in 2022.

It was, therefore, desperately searching for an issue that would make its support base of the urban poor keep their faith with the party. The AAP believes its proposed doorstep delivery of subsidised ration to the poor of Delhi could be its trump card and also repair its reputation dented after thousands of covid deaths in Delhi.

Also read — Centre, Delhi government at loggerheads over ration initiative

The scheme proposes to deliver four kg flour and one kg rice at the doorstep of the poor. The BJP-ruled Centre has shot the proposal down. The BJP argues the scheme will lead to pilferage and corruption. Law Minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the plan violates the National Food Security Act (NFSA), which allows for the delivery of food grains through fair price shops.

Food security rights activists have punched holes in the scheme. For example, the NFSA provides Rs 2 per kg wheat for the poor at fair price shops, but the Arvind Kejriwal government has proposed free home delivery of Rs 4 per kg wheat flour. Critics say it is easier to check the quality of wheat than that of wheat flour. A similar effort was discontinued in West Bengal some years back for this reason. The possibility of pilferage and overcharging also increases with doorstep delivery. But the AAP is unrelenting on the issue.

The AAP has walked on a political tightrope during and after the Delhi Assembly poll campaign, and the survival of its government in Delhi hangs by a thread after Parliament enacted a law in March that curtailed the autonomy of the Delhi government, vesting decision making powers in the hands of the Lieutenant Governor.

Also read — Now government in Delhi means Lieutenant Governor

The AAP does not want to get into the BJP-led Centre's crosshairs and has steered away from supporting joint statements of the Opposition parties on Covid-19 mismanagement and farm laws. Instead, on the farm laws, the AAP opted to protest alone.

The Left parties, who have supported the AAP over the years, have publicly questioned its silence on crucial issues of public concern. The AAP kept its criticism muted on the Union government-appointed administrator's controversial decisions in Lakshadweep, which like Delhi, is a union territory. However, it bears reminding that months before the Delhi polls, the AAP supported the repeal of Article 370, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of the status of a state and bringing it under central rule.

It did not utter a word against the Union government on the controversy around former West Bengal chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay. It ignored that the Trinamool Congress had specially flown down three of its Rajya Sabha MPs, despite the election campaign in West Bengal, to participate in the debate in Parliament in March on eroding the powers of the Delhi government.

While the AAP has dominated Delhi's politics since 2013 and governed it continuously since 2015, it still does not control Delhi's three resource-rich civic bodies. Until 2012, it was called the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and trifurcated in 2012.

It also needs to expand beyond Delhi. With an eye on Punjab, the AAP-led Delhi government has ordered the recruitment of 800 teachers to teach Punjabi in the schools it runs in Delhi. The AAP had launched its election campaign in Punjab with Kejriwal's public rally in Moga on March 21.

Its ambition of winning the faith of the urban poor is not entirely misplaced. In the civic polls in Surat in April, the AAP beat Congress to emerge a distant runner up to the BJP. The Gujarat Assembly polls are in November of 2022.

But AAP's influence in Punjab is restricted to only one of the three regions of the state. It lacks a known face in the state, and three of its legislators defected to Congress earlier this month.

The AAP believes the doorstep delivery of subsidised ration is that one issue that might strike a chord with the urban poor in Delhi and states like Gujarat and Punjab. The AAP is, therefore, unlikely to let go of it anytime soon.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.