Will BJP turn to ‘revadis’ in Delhi to unsettle AAP?

This Maharashtra victory showed that Narendra Modi, who once dismissed such populist schemes as ‘revadis’, is not at all averse to playing the game of freebies if it means winning elections

It is a tall order, but the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leader Arvind Kejriwal could be in serious trouble in the coming Delhi Assembly elections if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was to replicate its poll tactic of freebies used successfully in the recently concluded Maharashtra Assembly polls.

The BJP, upbeat after winning Haryana and Maharashtra by a huge margin, is expected to put its best foot forward to win Delhi. The saffron party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will work to deny AAP a hattrick in Delhi — a win which will propel Kejriwal as a key figure in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, India’s main opposition party alliance.

A decisive victory in Delhi could even propel Kejriwal as a key leader to take on Modi in the 2029 Lok Sabha polls. For Kejriwal, low ambition is a crime. He had fought against Modi in Varanasi in May 2014.

Currently, the BJP has seven MLAs in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. Five seats are vacant and the remaining 58 are with AAP. The Congress, which ruled Delhi for 15 years till 2015, does not have a presence in the House. AAP has also ousted the BJP from power in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi last year, where it was entrenched for 15 years.

Despite AAP’s failure to win from any one of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, when it comes to the Assembly polls, Kejriwal still has a better grasp of the mood in every mohalla.

So far, a highlight of Kejriwal and AAP’s politics has been the focus on welfare schemes or freebies, pejoratively referred to as ‘revadi’, like free electricity or water. 

However, the BJP’s landslide victory in Maharashtra which was largely attributed to the success of government schemes such as the Ladki Bahin Yojana and others has alarmed both the BJP and its detractors. This victory showed that Modi, who once dismissed such populist schemes as ‘revadis’, is not at all averse to playing the game of freebies if it means winning elections.

Perhaps, anticipating this move by the BJP, Kejriwal embarked on solidifying his vote bank among the underprivileged sections of society by announcing a ‘Revadi pe Charcha’. The best defense is a good offense.

Attempts are already on by the BJP to find a weak link in AAP. Lt Governor V K Saxena’s recent remarks that incumbent Chief Minister Atishi was “a 1,000 times better than her predecessor” Arvind Kejriwal could be seen in this light.

Modi and Kejriwal have a similar temperament in that they both like to take the lead and put other on the backfoot.

Kejriwal is too sharp on the political uptake and too opportunistic as well. AAP joined the I.N.D.I.A. bloc when pressure was building on him and other AAP leaders in the Delhi excise scam.

So far, the BJP’s attempts to destabilise AAP have come to naught, though there are occasional setbacks, like the sudden resignation of AAP leader and Delhi minister Kailash Gehlot. His joining the BJP was not unexpected for AAP.

Amid talk that former Union minister Smriti Irani could be made the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, a section of the BJP believes that the party’s Delhi unit is neither ship shape nor can such a decision be kept for the eleventh hour.

Anti-incumbency of 10 years could be a challenge for AAP in the upcoming polls. Another factor which could work against it is that it has been slow to address the civic issues after winning the MCD polls.

In conclusion, the BJP is expected to go all out in its campaign in the next few weeks to unsettle AAP, while AAP will be reaching out to Delhi’s voter highlighting its achievements. An important question here, which is almost an afterthought, is: what about the Congress? Will the grand old party put up a decent show and mark its presence in the Assembly?

(Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari are senior journalists.)

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