The BJP’s victory in Delhi comes on the heels of its success in Haryana and Maharashtra sweep.
Feb 8, 2025 20:02 IST First published on: Feb 8, 2025 at 18:33 IST
The comprehensive rout of the AAP and the BJP’s spectacular victory ripples well beyond the national capital. To begin with, it is the biggest setback for a party whose birth and unprecedented graph in a system that has a high threshold of entry and electoral viability could only have happened in the high-visibility setting of Delhi. Here, the AAP climbed out from the heart of the Anna Hazare movement against corruption that helped fell the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and paved the way for the sweep to power of the Narendra Modi-led BJP. Here, too, over two terms, the AAP resisted the Modi wave, and put its imprimatur on a “Delhi Model” of governance — consisting primarily of its successes in renovating the government school and, less successfully, setting up mohalla clinics, alongside provision of subsidised water and electricity. It was a model it hoped to make its calling card in its bid to spread to other parts of the country – so far, it has been able to do so only in Punjab. Its dramatic defeat in Delhi now means that it has lost its footing on its home ground, and also a vital springboard. Because if success is writ large, so is failure amplified in Delhi.
The AAP will need to ask how it lost the plot after winning two large mandates, why it surrendered its magnificent opportunity. Of course, it was up against formidable odds because of outside pressures — it was worn down by its hostilities with a powerful Centre and its nominee, the L-G, and the imprisonment on corruption allegations of its top leadership. But Kejriwal’s party needs to also look within, its political decline has happened in many circumstances of its own making. The early successes in the government school and mohalla clinic were routinised and, in its second term, they have been facing questions of patchy quality. Then there were the problems and issues of a rapidly growing metropolis on which the AAP government was seen to be neglectful, inattentive, or just throwing up its hands helplessly — water, most of all, and the worsening condition of roads, uncleared mounds of garbage, open drains, clogged sewer lines, and an AQI that is deteriorating. The AAP was simply not seen as a party that could address questions of the growing wear and tear of the infrastructure and services of a layered city, to which people flock in search of a better future from across the country.
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The BJP’s victory in Delhi comes on the heels of its success in Haryana and Maharashtra sweep. It brings to an end an exile of 27 years in the capital, and after the Lok Sabha setback last year, rehabilitates the party’s winning streak nationally. On the other side, will be a subdued Opposition alliance, the disarray within framed even more sharply. But the winner’s challenge is formidable too. It must build on the AAP’s successes in basic education and health care while framing a plan for the city that is more encompassing. Given that its governments rule both at the Centre and in Delhi, it will have no excuses for not responding to the demands of a metropolis where aspiration is the great leveller, and which can make the difference between defeat and victory.
