Aam
Aadmi Party is headed to win an unexpected over 60 seats in the 70 member Delhi
assembly – a first by any party in Delhi.
Congress
is expected to fail totally – failing to win even a single seat – a first for
Congress party in Delhi.
Bhartiya
Janata Party is expected to reduce to sub-10 bracket, possibly with 6-8 seats –
a first for the party to go below 10 in the Delhi assembly polls since 1993.
And it is because of BJP’s own doings.
Yes, blunders, one after the other.
Sheer
negligence and over-confidence:
Riding high on the Lok Sabha victory, the Modi Wave and the assembly victories
with Modi as the face, BJP did never take Delhi seriously – until it had become
too late.
Winning the Lok Sabha
polls with clear majority, first party to do so after 1984, and winning three
assembly polls in quick succession, Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and
emerging as the second largest party in Jammu & Kashmir – the confidence
thereafter made Delhi a light affair for BJP strategists who believed things
could be managed but when they realized the seriousness of affairs, of their
faulty handling of Delhi elections, it had become too late to reverse the tide.
In
two minds on its chances in Delhi: BJP was always in two minds on its
chances in Delhi and that ultimately resulted in the mess that we saw in these
assembly polls, as it could really never assess its ground properly and that
made it try to delay the Delhi polls until polls became inevitable.
Assembly polls could have been held
soon after the Lok Sabha polls and that would have given BJP the advantage of
the fresh national mandate that was hugely
in its favour.
That would also have taken away the
window of opportunity that Arvind Kejriwal
and AAP got with time at their hand to apologise for the ‘deserter act’ in
February 2014 and campaign to mobilize the opinions in their favour with ‘we
did commit mistake by leaving Delhi’s government just 49 days and we would not
do so again, please give us a second chance’ request,
while hard-selling the perceived goods of the governance of those 49 days. Humility
first came as the big leveller and then became the decisive
advantage for AAP.
Instead, BJP chose to keep on delaying
the polls. Let’s safely assume that had the BJP’s central leadership decided on
facing the polls earlier, the Lieutenant-Governor nod, with L-G being a central
government appointee and representative, would never be an issue.
The
Delhi house disorder:
BJP could not pay attention on setting its Delhi house in order even if there
was enough time, a year, between Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation in February 2014
and assembly polls in February 2015. Delhi BJP was a divided house with
factions furthering their agenda. This factionalism was evident when none of
the MPs took active interest in mobilizing public for the
January 10 Abhinandan Rally addressed by Narendra Modi. Delhi BJP remained
a divided house even as the polls approached. Now, with such a humiliating
loss, doing the course correction may be even more difficult.
Making
Delhi a prestige issue: Though BJP did prop up Kiran Bedi after the
lacklustre show of Narendra Modi’s Abhinandan Rally,
that was publicized as the launch event of BJP’s Delhi campaign, the whole BJP
campaign remained centred on Narendra Modi with party asking votes in Modi’s
name and his governance, and thus winning the polls became a prestige issue,
even if the signs were headed in a reversed direction. BJP was still fighting
the Delhi polls as if it could never have erred, as if ‘an electoral defeat’
had become an improbability for the party. The first glimpse of loss, with the
Abhinandan Rally, thus set a series of responses that further derailed its
prospects in Delhi.
In
panic mode:
Reacting in panic on almost every development had
become a hallmark of BJP that began with the January 10 rally that was
marketed in the name of Narendra Modi with a big media push but that turned out
a letdown. The expected range of crowd, in the range of one lakh, was a morale
busting 30,000-40,000. After it, BJP kept on changing its strategy regularly
that further muddied the waters leaving the
ground workers flabbergasted who didn’t have idea what was happening and who to
reach out to as the campaign was totally hijacked by the outsiders.
The
hijacked campaign:
BJP’s central leadership hijacked the campaign totally, dispelling the local
leadership.
Now, these bombarded ministers, MPs
and workers (including RSS workers) from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (to target the
voters with Eastern UP and Bihar roots) and leaders from other states were
strangers for the local voters.
And when the local line of connect,
the field worker in the assembly constituencies, starts acting disenchanted,
the exercise becomes counterproductive wiping out in the process any advantage
that it could have accrued.
And that is what exact happened with
BJP in these polls. We have good enough number of reports talking about the
disconnect of the dissatisfied field workers of BJP. Clearly, they added to the
negativity on BJP’s chances adding thus to the prospects of AAP and Arvind
Kejriwal as evident first by the pre-poll and exit poll projections and by the
results today with AAP emerging as the clear winner beating all expectations,
even AAP’s internal surveys.
The
negativity accrued from a negative campaign: While Arvind Kejriwal kept on
smiling and did not respond to the personal attacks, BJP’s campaigning became
more and more stinging. BJP resorted to a clearly negative campaign with no
care for elements of subtlety and satire. It was all out in the open.
It had fought the Lok Sabha election
on development plank with a campaign that was largely positive. The advertisement
with Anna Hazare’s photo or the ‘upadravi gotra’ advertisement was unnecessary.
BJP had to fine tune its campaign in the context that there was no
anti-incumbency against AAP’s previous government but it failed to do so.
Like Narendra Modi was the central target of the opponents in the Lok
Sabha polls that helped him in the end,
increasing his visibility when others failed to declare a credible name against
him, BJP unwittingly allowed Kejriwal the same advantage with its negative
person-centric campaign.
Issues
disowned:
By making the campaign Modi and Modi Vs Kejriwal centric and by maintaining
silence on issues like ‘Delhi’s full statehood’, something BJP had always been
crying about or on ‘independent audit of power distribution companies of
Delhi’, BJP went further downward on the credibility scale of voters. It did
not release its manifesto. Yes, in an age when ‘political corruption’ has
become a catchphrase about ‘politics, taking
seriously a manifesto doesn’t make for much, but then what was the need for the
party to come with a vision document, than too, just
three days before the polls?
BJP didn’t address the issues of Delhi
locally, instead it kept on talking about
big governance promises of Narendra Modi’s union government expecting the
voters to look for their pie in them. Now, who has the time and who cares for
generic approaches in an assembly polls? Yes, BJP’s generic approach to the
Delhi-specific issues worked to reduce its credibility even further.
Conditional
campaigning:
BJP’s conditional campaign or campaign focusing heavily on a conditional proposition
was another major reason behind BJP’s massive fall.
‘The voters should vote for BJP if
they have to see a developed Delhi’ was BJP’s straight message – repeated time
and again by its leaders including Narednra Modi – saying doing so would ensure
the coordination between union government and the government in Delhi. In
direct words, it is like – if you don’t vote
for us, don’t expect our help in Delhi’s development then – certainly an
undemocratic proposition.
Now, the poll outcome says Delhiites refused
to buy this conditional offer in the world’s largest democracy.
The
Kiran Bedi gamble that wasn’t: Para-dropping Kiran Bedi to address
these concerns, looking at her as someone a panacea for all BJP woes in Delhi
was the final element to complete the reversal of BJP’s electoral fortunes. Before
bringing in Bedi, senior BJP leaders were not taken into confidence. Also, with
her induction, the local leadership was virtually disengaged from campaigning
that further alienated the Delhi BJP workers.
Considering Kiran Bedi a masterstroke
when there were equal chances that the decision could have backfired also – was a
poorly devised electoral strategy as the party had no time for an alternative
in case of a negative progress report and that is exactly
what has happened.
Kiran Bedi, before it, was never
tested politically, and did not have the privilege of a
credibly clean figure, something that
Kejriwal enjoys. She had her fair share of controversies like allegations of
inflated airfare bills, controversy on her daughter’s admission in a medical
college, her U-turn on not joining politics, her U-turn on Narendra Modi and
controversies related to her career as an IPS officer including the spat with
lawyers in Delhi that make her an un-middle class personality as well.
BJP miscalculated on Kiran Bedi’s
appeal thinking it could be linked to Narendra Modi’s mass appeal and could well
be used as an alternative, local face for BJP.
BJP miscalculated that it could take
on an activist-turned politician with another activist-turned politician hoping
their days when they worked together would give the party strategists insight
into countering Kejriwal’s campaign more effectively – pinning Kejriwal in his
own way.
BJP paradropped Kiran Bedi just 22
days before the polls to face and already established
player who was enjoying consistently higher popularity ratings with virtually
no opposition on the scale. Kiran Bedi did not have the time even to re-compose
herself, let alone the basic essentials like reading the politics of Delhi in
the context of an AAP Vs BJP contest, speaking the political language and thus
making moves accordingly.
Instead, she kept on speaking like a
police officer, narrowed down by her administrative experience and remaining
confined to that when the need was to widen politically, when the canvas was
not the certain defined realms of a professional obligation but an undefined,
political landscape open to the dynamic changes as the campaigning progressed.
That could have worked for an activist but certainly not for a politician.
These blunders were magnified even
more when seen with the increasing fringe voices from within BJP and the
RSS-affiliated outfits - furthering the controversial religious agenda with
events like 'Ghar Vapasi for religious conversions', statements on making India
a Hindu nation, efforts to rewrite the text books in a particular context - the
politics of intolerance - a total antithesis of development politics - and this
mix didn't go down well with an increasingly demanding electorate that is
running out of patience and needs real development in real time.