While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is in the news for past several weeks for all the wrong reasons and seems to be imploding, two questions are supremely important and need to be answered.
One, is it the end of road for the 28-month-old political party that promised to kick-start a political revolution in India and triggered birth of similar political outfits in several countries in the neighborhood, particularly Pakistan?
Two, what are the implications for Indian national politics, as AAP seems to have pushed the self-destruct button? Of course, the implications of internal feud in AAP will be enormous for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian National Congress and the regional parties but what exactly are these?
AAP has been reduced to a theater of the absurd as two of its prominent faces and founding members, legal eagle Prashant Bhushan and psephologist Yogendra Yadav, who used to be close colleagues of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal have now been thrown out of all decision-making bodies of the party.
Kejriwal, now chief minister of Delhi, has declared an all-out war against the Bhushan-Yadav duo and accused them of conspiring with AAP rivals to ensure the party’s defeat in the recently concluded Delhi assembly polls. But the opposite happened and AAP ended up winning 67 of 70 seats, or 96 percent of the total seats, reducing BJP to just three seats and Congress to zero.
The deadly strife within AAP has threatened an early and unexpected political demise of AAP. In fact, an Indian astrologer Sushil Chaturvedi has predicted that AAP will collapse by January 2017 and Kejriwal will disappear from the Indian political scene, which he has dominated for last four years. Chaturvedi had predicted in December 2013 (when AAP had won 28 out of 70 seats in the then Delhi assembly elections) that AAP would face either massive infighting or withdrawal of support from the Congress. The former part of the prediction has come true now.
In a land where astrology is widely believed and followed, Kejriwal would be hoping he proves such doomsayers wrong. But then he has only one way to achieve that: By performing as chief minister and delivering on his tall promises he had made to the people of Delhi during election campaign.
Even this doesn’t seem to be happening. A quick tour of Delhi roads would prove that. Delhi has become a garbage capital as angry municipal workers, who have not been paid their salaries because of severe financial crunch in three municipal bodies, have littered garbage on hundreds of Delhi roads in protest.
To be fair to Kejriwal, he is not responsible for this as it is nothing but dirty politics. The three municipal bodies of Delhi are controlled by the BJP, which is the ruling party of India. However, Kejriwal can still not wash his hands off the garbage protest by municipal workers as he could have handled this better in such a way that citizens of Delhi are not inconvenienced.
But wait! There is a flip side to the dirty power struggle unleashed by the Bhushan-Yadav duo against Kejriwal. In fact, Kejriwal should emerge stronger in the coming months as the two crybabies are eventually completely marginalized. This is precisely what is going to happen.
First of all, the people of Delhi did not vote for Bhushan or Yadav. In fact, they did not vote even for AAP. They voted for just one man who they believed can give a new direction to the Indian politics: Arvind Kejriwal.
Left to themselves, Bhushan and Yadav cannot win their own seats in any election from anywhere in the country, leave alone repeating Kejriwal’s magic of winning 96 percent of Delhi assembly seats. Just about 10 months ago, Yadav was mauled in the general election when he had contested from Gurgaon parliamentary seat on AAP ticket. Yadav was then being seen as a serious contender for the post of chief minister of Haryana.
While people of India are getting bemused by the daily theater of the absurd they have been witnessing for weeks and Kejriwal’s popularity has undoubtedly taken a hit, Bhushan and Yadav have grossly erred in the timing of their protest.
They came out with guns blazing at Kejriwal at a time when the AAP leader was unarguably at the peak of his popularity and charisma.
Imagine veteran BJP leaders L.K. Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi, sidelined by Narendra Modi for past one year, opening a front against PM Modi immediately after he single-handedly won a clear mandate for the BJP! Advani and Joshi, though sulking, never indulged in the kind of stupidity Bhushan and Yadav are indulging in today.
Someone needs to tell Bhushan and Yadav that you don’t become a martyr by jumping before a speeding train. Now let us come to the second question about implications of internal war in AAP on the Indian national politics.
The immediate fallout will be that AAP will perforce have to confine itself within Delhi’s municipal limits and cannot dream of spreading its wings nationally for quite some time. This is good news for the Congress and regional parties as the Delhi results have shown that AAP has affected them only, not the BJP.
As for the BJP, the Modi government can safely cover up its sins of omission and commission and tell the electorate nationwide that it is the only viable alternative whenever next round of assembly elections take place.
But the trouble is that this year only state goes to polls — Bihar, and that too at the end of the year. Till then, Kejriwal has time to recover politically and start delivering.
