On Monday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is likely to table the much touted Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi assembly.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, after the Delhi Cabinet cleared the Bill last week, recounted his days with ‘Team Anna’ when he had burnt copies of the UPA government’s draft of the Lokpal, terming it ‘jokepal’.
“Feel nostalgic when i see this pic. We had burnt govt’s 'jokepal' at that time,” Mr Kejriwal tweeted.
It was three years ago, that the party was formed to have a strong Jan Lokpal in the country. On November 26, 2012 the Congress’ Manish Tewari ridiculed the party and claimed that “the Aam Aadmi (common man) is synonymous with the Congress since 1885 when the party came into existence...Therefore, nobody can either hijack or skyjack or bicycle-jack the intrinsic relationship between the Congress and the people of this country.” Now, the Congress has been wiped out from Delhi after ruling for 15 years and the BJP is reduced to three seats. But the three-year journey of AAP has been a roller coaster ride.
It emerged from a movement and asked for support promising ‘clean politics’, making choices based on a referendum. Even the decision to enter politics was taken after public poll on social media, whether to contest against Sheila Dikshit or not in 2013 Delhi elections was also decided by the public. The party leaders, soon after winning and to not let go of their image of ‘aam admi’, travelled in public transport, didn’t want sprawling bungalows or police security. The MLAs and Mr. Kejriwal remained in activism mode.
Before they could complete two months after winning 28 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly in its maiden election, AAP left the public disillusioned as Mr. Kejriwal resigned over Jan Lokpal Bill. Many volunteers and few leaders left the party disappointed with the decision. Even the public felt cheated and many abstained from voting for them in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Even the party leaders, when they look back at 2014, call it a year of ‘mistakes’. “We shouldn’t have quit then and contesting Lok Sabha was another mistake. We then didn’t realise the disappointment of the public. It was after the Lok Sabha results that we realised the damage Kejriwal’s resignation had done,” said a party leader.
Sources in the party say that even then the AAP convener didn’t want to contest as many as 432 seats in Lok Sabha polls. “Earlier the plan was to contest only 70-seats against most corrupt candidates fielded by BJP and Congress. But it was on Shanti Bhushan’s insistence that the party fielded more than 400 candidates.” AAP didn’t win a single seat in Delhi, its place of origin and bastion, but bagged four seats in Punjab.
It took aggressive campaigning and an apology by Mr. Kejriwal for his resignation, before the people started supporting AAP again. In the Delhi 2015 elections, the party got a dream election result, with a brute majority of 67 out of 70 seats. “From a movement to a party, AAP has changed the rules of the game,” explains political analyst Manish Priyam.
“The party was born out of India Against Corruption movement but the public doesn’t see Mr. Kejriwal as having betrayed Anna Hazare.”
However, the internal rift within the party and the dramatic expulsion of Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan and two other leaders in March this year was a big blow to the party’s ‘stable’ image. “I see only ups and downs in the party. But now there is stability in the party after expulsion of the two leaders,” said Sanjay Kumar of CSDS.
“If we go by their performance in the government, it will again win in the current scenario”. The image of the Centre not letting AAP-government work has been imprinted. “If we see, the anger in the lower class is less though not much has changed on ground in the last nine months. But Mr. Kejriwal is still their favourite. The credit cannot be wholly given to the AAP. It is because of the BJP and the Congress failures in Delhi,” said Mr. Priyam.
While the party is still recuperating from the expulsion row, two of its MLA were thrown out of the Cabinet. Former Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar stepped down after police arrested him in fake degree row and Mr. Kejriwal sacked Environment and Food and Supply minister Asim Khan after an audio clip of him asking for bribe was leaked. Sources in the party said that the rift between the expelled leaders and Mr. Kejriwal widened during ticket distribution for 2015 elections as they were unhappy with the selection of some candidates.
