AAP Ruling Party White Washed in Delhi

The General Elections of 2024 of the largest democracy in the world ‘India’ were successfully carried out and the results are out now as of June 4th.

In one of the biggest turns of events, The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is the ruling govt of the national capital ‘Delhi’ has lost all its seats despite gaining a 6% rise in vote share from 18.2% in 2019 to 24.14% in 2024.

Although not entirely out of the blue, given the recent developments that took place in the alleged Delhi Liquor case; the outcome was somewhat shocking, especially given the clean defeat. 

Just like in 2014 and 2019, it was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that was able to bag all the 7 Lok Sabha seats of Delhi (Chandni Chowk, East Delhi, New Delhi, North-East Delhi, North-West Delhi, South Delhi, & West Delhi) defeating the INDIA bloc’s National Congress-AAP alliance with a clear verdict. 

Although, this time, the majority of the seats won by BJP came with a lower margin of 124,333, 89,325, 78,000, 93,663, 138,778, 199,013, and 290,849 votes compared to the last term when the margins reached 2.28 lakh to 5.78 lakh votes. The candidates who won for the BJP include Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, Praveen Khandelwal, Bansuri Swaraj, Harsh Malhotra, Manoj Tiwari, Kamaljeet Sehrawat, and Yogender Chandoliya respectively. Eventually, getting 2% fewer votes from 56% in 2019 to 54% in 2024 as per the Election Commission of India.

Nevertheless, the BJP’s Delhi Chief Virendra Sachdeva credited the clean sweep to Modi’s magic and the party’s relentless pursuit to shed light on the alleged liquor policy scam and other corruption cases purported by AAP ministers. 

Despite facing strong and direct opposition from AAP in 4 seats and Congress in 3 seats as opposed to 2019’s triangular competition, the saffron BJP was able to pull an undisputed victory.

Aside from the supposed allegations, much of what went wrong for AAP in the Lok Sabha elections of 2024 has to do with poor campaigning and lack of performance on the surface. Especially, due to the strategic arrest of Delhi’s CM Arvind Kejriwal by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) right before the elections.  

Albeit, the chief minister of Delhi was able to get an interim bail of 21 days from the Supreme Court to run the election campaigns, it wasn’t enough to make any difference. 

Sanjiv Ranjan, an assistant professor at the Motilal Nehru College, stated that “the corruption charges against Kejriwal and his ministers have not been taken lightly by the people of Delhi which is one of the main reasons why the party could not perform well in the elections.”

According to a party insider, there was a lack of coordination and strategic planning among the party workers which resulted in a “poorly fought election” by AAP’s candidates. 

Plus, due to the alliance with the Indian National Congress, they were not able to deploy the right combination of workers on the ground where Congress was contesting. As such, most of the AAP’s MLAs and candidates were directed to campaign outside of those constituencies.

At the same time, there was a lot of discourse and quandary over multiple issues with the alliance that caused their election campaign to go awry, the leader said.

A senior Congress leader also confirmed that a lack of coordination and accord between parties’ workers and top leaders from both sides has led to their devastating defeat in Delhi.

Another key reason for AAP’s decisive loss in Delhi was the transfer of votes from Congress to BJP in some places, the representative added.

Meanwhile, AAP’s National General Secretary, Sandeep Pathak has asserted that the outcome of the 2024 General Elections in Delhi was not so shocking in the end as “Delhi has a set pattern of voting for Lok Sabha and assembly elections and the people stuck to it.”

In any case, the leader also discarded any hope of alliance in the state in the upcoming Delhi Assembly polls next year.

Meanwhile, other AAP leaders professed that it was too early for the party to take any final decision on the matter.

To see if AAP can make any difference in the Delhi State Assembly elections in 2025 and change public opinion in their favor, all we need to do is wait.