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“My heart goes out to those idealist AAP volunteers who worked for change. Please don’t give up on honest politics even if your leadership has,” said a tweet from AAP’s founder leader Yogendra Yadav, soon after the results of Assembly elections were announced.
Yadav, who resigned from the party due to differences with AAP National Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, was indicating that the party failed to use its founding principles in Goa and Punjab, where it had hoped to make a major breakthrough, even form the government.
The party, which was avowedly established to take up people’s issues such as problems in service delivery and corruption, rode to power in Delhi in 2013 and 2015 after Kejriwal successfully campaigned against the policies of Sheila Dikshit’s Congress government in the State and against the Narendra Modi government at the Centre. After a fractured mandate in 2013 that saw the party emerge the largest in the Delhi Assembly, Kejriwal led a 49-government, which was followed by President’s rule. In 2015, the party came back with a roaring victory, winning 67 of the 70 Assembly seats. But in Punjab, the party’s focus seemed to veer away from common man issues such as agrarian distress and unemployment. Rather it campaigned on sensitive issues such as desecration of holy books.
“A year ago, Sri Guru Granth Sahib was disrespected in Bargari. People who were behind it have not been caught yet. After ‘jhaadu wali party’ (AAP) comes to power we will punish them in a way like no one else so that they dare not repeat it again...disrespect of any religious book will not be tolerated,” Kejriwal had said during the campaign.
The party’s focus on the Malwa region, and its inability to project a chief ministerial candidate also added to its “poor” performance in Punjab. While the party got 18 out of the 69 seats in Malwa, it did not get a single seat from either the Majha or the Doaba regions. The party’s focus on NRIs from the State and a soft stand towards fundamentalist Sikh elements may have repelled voters.
The result will be a setback for the AAP’s national ambitions of the AAP and the party may have to forge an alliance in the elections in Gujarat, scheduled for later this year, where the party is trying to gain a foothold by working closely with Patel and Dalit groups in the State.
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