Why BJP won’t get any help from AAP in Delhi // Siddharth Varadarajan - Reality, one bite at a time
The assembly elections were supposed to end in a 4-0 sweep for the BJP but someone forgot to tell the Aam Aadmi party about it. Founded just over a year ago, AAP made a barn-storming debut in Delhi, winning 28 seats and preventing the BJP, which got 32 seats, from gaining an outright majority. AAP’s success also put a crimp in the premise that a BJP wave is sweeping the nation. While the BJP rolled to power in Rajasthan, boosted its majority in Madhya Pradesh, and edged ahead in Chhattishgarh, it was essentially a two-horse race between it and the Congress in those three states. In Delhi however, voters were presented with a third alternative and a sustantial number picked the newest kid on the block. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was Arvind Kejriwal, the founder and face of AAP, thumping three-time Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit by over 25,000 votes.
The triumphant wave at AAP headquarters has also given the party the impetus it was looking for to take the plunge into national politics, which appears to have ruffled the BJP’s feathers even more. Perhaps smarting from not winning Delhi outright, BJP leaders took to denigrating their latest challenger, suggesting AAP was unfit for governance and that it would be swept aside by Modi-mania in the 2014 Lok Sabha. During a discussion on NDTV, a BJP representative warned the AAP about showing humility and of the consequences of the coming of Modi. "The anti-Congress mandate is clear," he said. “All surveys have showed Narendra Modi is way ahead of Arvind Kejriwal as a preferred Prime Ministerial candidate. So if AAP doesn't respect that, the people will reject them. What they do - the wire cutting gimmicks - is exciting, but it isn't governance.” It was a sentiment that would be echoed by Ravi Shankar Prasad on CNN-IBN, when he said India is yearning for a change and that those people who have voted for AAP in Delhi would vote for Narendra Modi in the national elections.
Even a seasoned politician like Arun Jaitley felt the need to criticise the AAP after the party refused to join hands with either the Congress of the BJP in Delhi. "You're an insider already and you're still positioning yourself as an outsider,” Jaitley said on NDTV. “What does that even mean? It means that you are embarrassed to be a part of a government from the fear of being criticized. What kind of politics is that?" Jaitley, who comes from the traditional paradigm of politic insisted that parties need to take pragmatic decisions and cannot be motivated by idealism. He, and other BJP leaders, also suggested that the AAP’s desire to sit in the opposition represented a shirking of responsibility and showed they coud not be taken seriously.
However, Prashant Bhushan of the AAP rubbished these arguments. "We are not just an alternative political party,” he said. “We are trying to give the country an alternative brand of politics. How can we gang up with the same people, whose politics we have condemned? People are fed up of the duplicity and communalism of the BJP and Congress, hence they voted for us." He was backed up by Yogendra Yadav, who as usual spoke in measured tones. Yadav pointed out that the only possible way of 'cleansing' Delhi of he traditional form politics practised by the BJP and the Congress was to win an outright majority. Failing that, the party had no option but to take up the guise of a principled opposition. It was therefore juvenile to assert that the AAP didn’t want the responsibility of government because they refused to partner or support the other two parties. They were simply sticking to their principles and promises on the back of which they had been elected.
Yogendra Yadav then smartly turned the tables on Jaitley. "Actually, I can throw the suggestion back to Mr Jaitley. Why doesn't BJP ally with Congress and lead the government? If they can say, 'how can we do it', why can't we say the same too? People who have voted for us have done so because they are wary of the same corrupt political traditions. We can't do some back door deal with any of them," he said.
Jaitley and others also argued that the AAP was not equipped to govern, saying it was easy to point fingers but much harder to actually lead and that if AAP did actually have to govern, the party would be found out. Once again Yogendra Yadav would not be drawn in to a mud slinging argument. Instead, he simply pointed out how the BJP and the Congress had been wrong about the APP from the beginning. “At first you said we'll fail if we formed a party. They you said we'll fail if we contest the polls. Now you're saying we'll not last long enough," he pointed out.
While Harsh Vardan, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate for Delhi admitted the party had underestimated the AAP, it seems like the BJP’s central leadership is determined to keep underestimating this upstart. Whether the BJP like it or not, the AAP is now set to grow beyond a Delhi-centric party and already has 307 district units in place across the country. "After this performance, more people will want to join us and fight for us," Prashant Bhushan said.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-bjp-wont-get-any-help-from-aap-in-delhi-1276229.html
Siddharth Varadarajan - Reality, one bite at a time
The results of the 2013 assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are out but those looking for clear pointers towards how the next general election will play out are likely to be left scratching their heads. The Bharatiya Janata Party turned in a spectacular performance in Rajasthan and wrested the state from the Congress. It has retained Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the latter with a significant increase in its seat share. But in Delhi, the BJP failed to properly ride the wave of anti-Congress sentiment, yielding crucial political space to the Aam Aadmi Party and falling short of a clear-cut majority. That said, this '3-and-a-half to zero' verdict in favour of the BJP and against the Congress is no mean achievement and is significant for what it tells us about the state of the two national parties in these four states. Taken together, the four account for 72 Lok Sabha seats, of which the Congress had won 40 and the BJP 30 in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. If the current trends carry forward to 2014, the Congress will lose all 7 Delhi seats, and perhaps as many as 17 seats from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, giving the BJP a net gain of 24.
The truth of the matter is that both in these states and at the wider national level, the Congress is in retreat and its saffron challenger is clearly ascendant. But that still does not leave us with a clear sense of what will happen overall in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Before the current round of state elections, there were three big questions that needed answering.
First, is the Congress party under the stewardship of Rahul Gandhi capable of reviving its flagging fortunes? The answer today is a resounding 'No'. Sunday's results have surely put paid to the notion that the Congress vice president is capable of producing a miracle that can banish not just the dysfunctionality of the party's organization but also the unpopularity of the Manmohan Singh government. Whether he is declared his party's prime ministerial candidate or not, the Congress's electoral fate seems more or less sealed. As for his promise of taking a leaf from the AAP's playbook and moving away from "traditional politics", I'm not holding my breath.
The second big question for which we were looking for answers was whether the BJP under Narendra Modi's leadership is likely to capitalize on the Congress's abject condition. Here the picture is a little complicated. The 'Modi effect' is present - it would be foolish to deny that - but its impact is neither uniform nor decisive. The BJP's victories in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are handsome, and no doubt the appeal of Modi to a section of the urban electorate contributed to the inherent strength that Shivraj Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje Scindia brought to the campaign.
And yet, the scale of the victories here is not unprecedented, either for the BJP or indeed the Congress. The Congress swept Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in a comparable fashion in 1998. And Uma Bharati won 173 seats for the BJP in MP in 2003 when Modi was not even a blip on the horizon. Crediting the "Modi Wave" for the BJP's wins in these two states on Sunday thus appears a bit of a stretch, though it has clearly affected the margin of victory in Rajasthan. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP vote rose dramatically - up by 8 percentage points - but this was thanks largely to the return of Uma Bharati to the party's fold.
Indeed, when we turn to Chhattisgarh and Delhi, the Modi effect appears totally absent. Not only did his hectic campaigning in these two states fail to give the BJP a big boost, the fact that he was not able to convince a third of Delhi's urban anti-Congress electorate to choose his party over the Aam Aadmi Party is surely a sign that the Gujarat Chief Minister's popularity and appeal cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, the Delhi result has underlined the fact that Narendra Modi is not the only face of anti-Congress sentiment in the country... read more:
http://svaradarajan.blogspot.in/2013/12/what-2013-results-mean-for-2014_6985.html
The triumphant wave at AAP headquarters has also given the party the impetus it was looking for to take the plunge into national politics, which appears to have ruffled the BJP’s feathers even more. Perhaps smarting from not winning Delhi outright, BJP leaders took to denigrating their latest challenger, suggesting AAP was unfit for governance and that it would be swept aside by Modi-mania in the 2014 Lok Sabha. During a discussion on NDTV, a BJP representative warned the AAP about showing humility and of the consequences of the coming of Modi. "The anti-Congress mandate is clear," he said. “All surveys have showed Narendra Modi is way ahead of Arvind Kejriwal as a preferred Prime Ministerial candidate. So if AAP doesn't respect that, the people will reject them. What they do - the wire cutting gimmicks - is exciting, but it isn't governance.” It was a sentiment that would be echoed by Ravi Shankar Prasad on CNN-IBN, when he said India is yearning for a change and that those people who have voted for AAP in Delhi would vote for Narendra Modi in the national elections.
Even a seasoned politician like Arun Jaitley felt the need to criticise the AAP after the party refused to join hands with either the Congress of the BJP in Delhi. "You're an insider already and you're still positioning yourself as an outsider,” Jaitley said on NDTV. “What does that even mean? It means that you are embarrassed to be a part of a government from the fear of being criticized. What kind of politics is that?" Jaitley, who comes from the traditional paradigm of politic insisted that parties need to take pragmatic decisions and cannot be motivated by idealism. He, and other BJP leaders, also suggested that the AAP’s desire to sit in the opposition represented a shirking of responsibility and showed they coud not be taken seriously.
However, Prashant Bhushan of the AAP rubbished these arguments. "We are not just an alternative political party,” he said. “We are trying to give the country an alternative brand of politics. How can we gang up with the same people, whose politics we have condemned? People are fed up of the duplicity and communalism of the BJP and Congress, hence they voted for us." He was backed up by Yogendra Yadav, who as usual spoke in measured tones. Yadav pointed out that the only possible way of 'cleansing' Delhi of he traditional form politics practised by the BJP and the Congress was to win an outright majority. Failing that, the party had no option but to take up the guise of a principled opposition. It was therefore juvenile to assert that the AAP didn’t want the responsibility of government because they refused to partner or support the other two parties. They were simply sticking to their principles and promises on the back of which they had been elected.
Yogendra Yadav then smartly turned the tables on Jaitley. "Actually, I can throw the suggestion back to Mr Jaitley. Why doesn't BJP ally with Congress and lead the government? If they can say, 'how can we do it', why can't we say the same too? People who have voted for us have done so because they are wary of the same corrupt political traditions. We can't do some back door deal with any of them," he said.
Jaitley and others also argued that the AAP was not equipped to govern, saying it was easy to point fingers but much harder to actually lead and that if AAP did actually have to govern, the party would be found out. Once again Yogendra Yadav would not be drawn in to a mud slinging argument. Instead, he simply pointed out how the BJP and the Congress had been wrong about the APP from the beginning. “At first you said we'll fail if we formed a party. They you said we'll fail if we contest the polls. Now you're saying we'll not last long enough," he pointed out.
While Harsh Vardan, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate for Delhi admitted the party had underestimated the AAP, it seems like the BJP’s central leadership is determined to keep underestimating this upstart. Whether the BJP like it or not, the AAP is now set to grow beyond a Delhi-centric party and already has 307 district units in place across the country. "After this performance, more people will want to join us and fight for us," Prashant Bhushan said.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-bjp-wont-get-any-help-from-aap-in-delhi-1276229.html
Siddharth Varadarajan - Reality, one bite at a time
The results of the 2013 assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are out but those looking for clear pointers towards how the next general election will play out are likely to be left scratching their heads. The Bharatiya Janata Party turned in a spectacular performance in Rajasthan and wrested the state from the Congress. It has retained Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the latter with a significant increase in its seat share. But in Delhi, the BJP failed to properly ride the wave of anti-Congress sentiment, yielding crucial political space to the Aam Aadmi Party and falling short of a clear-cut majority. That said, this '3-and-a-half to zero' verdict in favour of the BJP and against the Congress is no mean achievement and is significant for what it tells us about the state of the two national parties in these four states. Taken together, the four account for 72 Lok Sabha seats, of which the Congress had won 40 and the BJP 30 in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. If the current trends carry forward to 2014, the Congress will lose all 7 Delhi seats, and perhaps as many as 17 seats from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, giving the BJP a net gain of 24.
The truth of the matter is that both in these states and at the wider national level, the Congress is in retreat and its saffron challenger is clearly ascendant. But that still does not leave us with a clear sense of what will happen overall in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Before the current round of state elections, there were three big questions that needed answering.
First, is the Congress party under the stewardship of Rahul Gandhi capable of reviving its flagging fortunes? The answer today is a resounding 'No'. Sunday's results have surely put paid to the notion that the Congress vice president is capable of producing a miracle that can banish not just the dysfunctionality of the party's organization but also the unpopularity of the Manmohan Singh government. Whether he is declared his party's prime ministerial candidate or not, the Congress's electoral fate seems more or less sealed. As for his promise of taking a leaf from the AAP's playbook and moving away from "traditional politics", I'm not holding my breath.
The second big question for which we were looking for answers was whether the BJP under Narendra Modi's leadership is likely to capitalize on the Congress's abject condition. Here the picture is a little complicated. The 'Modi effect' is present - it would be foolish to deny that - but its impact is neither uniform nor decisive. The BJP's victories in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are handsome, and no doubt the appeal of Modi to a section of the urban electorate contributed to the inherent strength that Shivraj Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje Scindia brought to the campaign.
And yet, the scale of the victories here is not unprecedented, either for the BJP or indeed the Congress. The Congress swept Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in a comparable fashion in 1998. And Uma Bharati won 173 seats for the BJP in MP in 2003 when Modi was not even a blip on the horizon. Crediting the "Modi Wave" for the BJP's wins in these two states on Sunday thus appears a bit of a stretch, though it has clearly affected the margin of victory in Rajasthan. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP vote rose dramatically - up by 8 percentage points - but this was thanks largely to the return of Uma Bharati to the party's fold.
Indeed, when we turn to Chhattisgarh and Delhi, the Modi effect appears totally absent. Not only did his hectic campaigning in these two states fail to give the BJP a big boost, the fact that he was not able to convince a third of Delhi's urban anti-Congress electorate to choose his party over the Aam Aadmi Party is surely a sign that the Gujarat Chief Minister's popularity and appeal cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, the Delhi result has underlined the fact that Narendra Modi is not the only face of anti-Congress sentiment in the country... read more:
http://svaradarajan.blogspot.in/2013/12/what-2013-results-mean-for-2014_6985.html
