What swung the vote in Delhi polls: Civic issues
The Capital suffered a bruising five years of governance dysfunction, entangled in the eccentricities of its complex governance system.
Go back to the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) landslide victory in 2020. That year, bruised by the drubbing received in the Lok Sabha polls just months before, the sweeping protests on account of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, and a combative Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which sought to paint then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal as an anti-India force, Delhi’s ruling party appeared to be fighting with its back to the wall.
The AAP’s saviour was its record of delivery. It showcased improved government schools, ratcheted up public spending in education, built a slew of neighbourhood clinics, unveiled free schemes for medicines, diagnostics and even surgeries, expanded its signature tariff breaks on electricity and water, and offered free public transport to women. It resulted in a groundswell of support for the AAP, especially among poor people and women.
The contrast with 2025 could not be starker. The Capital suffered a bruising five years of governance dysfunction, entangled in the eccentricities of its complex governance system. The unprecedented acrimony between the elected state government and the lieutenant governor derailed local governance and plunged the Capital into a morass of toxic air, crumbling infrastructure, rising crime, and policy dysfunction. On issues big and small, the two centres of power clashed repeatedly and bitterly, eschewing the welfare of the ordinary citizen. As a result, Delhi not only lost its sheen but also faced heightened vulnerability to problems such as urban flooding, potholed roads, power cuts and water shortages.
Nothing was a bigger baggage for the AAP, or a bigger marker of anti-incumbency in this poll season than the civic mess that has roiled Delhi. The AAP repeatedly alleged that the unelected L-G, who reports to the Union home ministry, was blocking the work of the elected city government at the behest of the Centre. To be sure, there was more than a kernel of truth to this claim. But the endless stream of back-and-forth on the smallest of issues, on every scheme and welfare promise, exhausted ordinary citizens and their patience. As petition after petition stacked up before the Supreme Court, residents, especially in middle-class colonies, saw their civic facilities crumble. The women who had convinced their brothers and husbands to vote for the AAP five years ago either gave up or stayed at home. Except the poorest whose material well-being was tied to the AAP’s welfare architecture, people grew tired.
The AAP’s handsome victory in the municipal corporation elections two years ago became a curse in disguise as citizens asked why a party that prided itself on delivery and being present on the ground was no longer focused on either. They were exasperated at the apathy. They listened to the AAP’s arguments at first. But after a while, when the garbage piled up and the potholes became craters, they blamed the party that held the keys to both the local and state governments.
Two weeks into its campaign, the BJP suddenly realised this. It quickly dialled down the rhetoric on corruption and amped up its outreach to convert the simmering anger into votes. It stayed away from incendiary rhetoric and focussed on a campaign that turned the elections into a referendum on the AAP and Arvind Kejriwal. The irritation over Delhi’s civic decay decisively turned the tide against the party whose USP was being rooted, delivery-oriented and transparent. The middle-class found no reason to continue backing a party whose governance model had been effectively thwarted.
Anti-incumbency is often written about in abstraction. But in Delhi, in 2025, anti-incumbency singed the AAP because it was about tangible things – the diffident water supply, the stuck welfare promises, the miles-long traffic snarls, the power outages and the mounds of garbage. In the face of the ordinary Delhi citizen’s relentless aspiration for a better life, the AAP buckled.