Inside the fight: How AAP kept BJP off Delhi for 10 months during Prez rule

The BJP, in the 10 months of President's Rule in the capital, made several attempts to form government by getting support of breakaway Congress MLAs and some rebel Aam AAP legislators.

Updated on: Feb 10, 2015, 12:17:22 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal may have steered his party towards a resounding victory in Delhi but his biggest achievement since he resigned as Delhi chief minister a year ago was not allowing the BJP to form government in the national capital despite several attempts.

The BJP, in the 10 months of President's Rule in the capital, made several attempts to form government by getting support of breakaway Congress MLAs and some rebel Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators.

It was Kejriwal who denied them an opportunity by making their bids public and maintaining a hawk's eye on his legislators and those of the Congress who could have helped the BJP.

The BJP came closest to forming the government in July--less than two months after Narendra Modi took over as prime minister--as it claimed to have the support of six of the eight Congress MLAs and a couple of rebel AAP legislators.

The BJP may have formed government had not Kejriwal gone on a tweeting spree on July 17, posing questions to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung on whether he should invite the BJP to form government despite a public outcry.

"Can L-G afford not to invite BJP? Else, won't he be transferred or removed, as happened to other governors?" Kejriwal asked in one of the many tweets that day.

A month later, a bid by two AAP legislators to strike a deal with the BJP in Goa was foiled when the story of their trip to the popular holiday destination was leaked to the media. As a result, the duo was forced to return within minutes of landing at Goa airport.

"It was not an easy task as the legislators were being offered a huge amount of money. But we were able to keep our legislature party intact and keep tabs on Congress legislators also," a senior AAP leader said, soon after trends of the Delhi assembly election results emerged on Tuesday morning.

Had the BJP been able to form government after Modi took charge, Kejriwal's political revival would have been difficult after his party's poor showing in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Stocks were in favour of Modi and even a minority BJP government in Delhi would have survived its full term.

The BJP committed a huge tactical mistake by not dissolving the Delhi assembly soon after winning absolute majority in the Lok Sabha polls, when Modi's popularity was at a peak. A BJP leader told this correspondent that had the elections in Delhi been held along with Maharashtra and Haryana, the party would have won hands down in the name of Modi.

"Trying to form the government by splitting Congress or AAP was fraught with disastrous consequences and we are paying for it now," he said.

Tactically too the BJP was found wanting when compared to Kejriwal. Its late decision to declare Kiran Bedi its chief ministerial candidate after stating that it would contest the Delhi polls in the name of Modi appears to have backfired. If the BJP wanted to project a candidate, it should have done it soon after the Delhi assembly was dissolved in November and not after elections were announced, to counter Kejriwal's guerilla campaign.

The BJP also lost the early bird advantage to the AAP as it declared most of its candidates just a couple of days before the last date of filing nominations. With the ground level worker disenchanted with Bedi's nomination, candidates did not get time to make alternate arrangements to reach out to voters.

The trends also show that the BJP's choice of candidates in many constituencies may have gone wrong as strong contenders lost to the formula-based and quota disbursement of tickets. Giving tickets to turncoats - Krishna Tirath from the Congress and Vinod Kumar Binny from the AAP--appears to have backfired. The tag of the BJP being a Bania-Punjabi party has proved to be a disadvantage in a city where those living in slums and unauthorised colonies constitute about 40% of voters.

Kejriwal's win should also be an eye opener for the Modi government as the PM has not been able to meet people's expectations, which were raised very high during the 2014 election.

For the Congress, getting back its vote bank from Kejriwal will be a daunting task.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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