What explains the big BJP win in the Capital
Today, the desertion of middle- and upper-class voters is the primary reason for the AAP’s defeat. Even the once unassailable Kejriwal lost his seat.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last ruled the national capital in the 1990s. Today’s Delhi is a different city. It changed from the “dusty town” of the ’90s to a hugely cosmopolitan city attracting talent from across India, and the world, as the core of the National Capital Region (NCR). The early 2000s, under the stewardship of Congress chief minister Sheila Dixit, saw a major transformation of Delhi’s physical space with the making of broad roads and significant greening. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal, won office for the first time in 2013, riding a wave of middle-class and upper-class discontent with the perceived corruption of the Congress.
Today, the desertion of middle- and upper-class voters is the primary reason for the AAP’s defeat. Even the once unassailable Kejriwal lost his seat. In office, the AAP had re-branded itself as a party that catered to the lower middle-class and poorer voters by promising free water and electricity and revamping public education and public health, while at the same holding on to a modicum of the middle-class vote by presenting an image of incorruptibility and offering a different kind of politics. But murmurs about corruption in liquor licences, the alleged opulence of some of the AAP leaders, and a general malaise after returning to office in 2020 saw these middle-class and upper-class voters deserting the party.
The AAP is synonymous with the “Delhi Model” of articulating a politics around subsidies and public goods. This loss will certainly dent its image. But Delhi is also a strange place for this kind of politics, with a per capita income of nearly five lakh (the third wealthiest Union territory/state in India) and more than 50% of its voter population being upper/general caste. It is an unlikely place for such a model to take hold, and the defeat of AAP is partially due to Delhi’s demography. To win Delhi, a party will always need to win a significant chunk of middle- and upper-class voters. Nowhere are the shifting moods of these classes more evident than in West, Southwest and Northwest Delhi, which hold 21 of Delhi’s 70 seats. This part of Delhi is home to large Punjabi- and Haryanvi-speaking populations, which is mercantile, upwardly mobile, and aspirational. Five years ago, the AAP swept this region winning 20 of the 21 seats. But this time, AAP was decimated — it lost in 18 of them.
This region also houses people who have mostly supported Prime Minister Modi and the BJP in the general election. The AAP hoped to attract a large share of these voters in the assembly election. For example, in the 2019 general election, the BJP won 57% of the vote, but its vote share slumped to just 39% a year later in the 2020 assembly election. In the 2024 general election, the BJP won 57% of the vote while its final vote share in the 2025 state election is likely to be around 46%. Thus, while the BJP still faced significant erosion of its vote in general elections, the growing disenchantment of the middle and upper classes with the AAP was enough to wrest control of Delhi.
While the politics of Delhi is unique, this result will surely reverberate nationally. In the run-up to the 2024 general election, several key leaders of the AAP, including party supremo Arvind Kejriwal, were jailed. Far from generating sympathy for the AAP, the allegations against its party leaders found traction. The AAP toed a line on identity politics with Kejriwal making “soft” Hindutva statements and chief minister Atishi making a comical attempt at a harder Hindutva line. The fact that leaders seemed to be fighting for themselves (for good reason given the threat of imprisonment and the fact that more power was given to the lieutenant governor instead of the democratically elected leaders) instead of addressing the core issues of Delhi only made matters worse. A party that had branded itself on a different kind of politics started to look like everyone else. This will matter in other states where the AAP has made inroads, such as Gujarat and Punjab.
Like many elections that we have seen since the 2024 general election, this victory for the BJP had less to do with Prime Minister Modi. A common thread between the BJP’s surprising victories in Haryana, Maharashtra, and now Delhi, is that a chief minister candidate was either not named or the issue was deemed irrelevant to the party’s political appeal. These elections have been won on sheer organisational capacity and efficiency — the fact that the party makes fewer mistakes while picking candidates, in mobilising voters, and in preventing the fracturing of its core vote. But this is also a very different kind of politics for the BJP. Paradoxically, winning states in this manner does not dramatically increase the political appeal of PM Modi. A party that was so long run on Brand Modi is gradually developing a new identity (although we do not yet know what it will be). For its part, the BJP will have to develop an imagination of what Delhi wants and figure out how to govern a major cosmopolitan metropolis in the 21st century.
Neelanjan Sircar is an associate professor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. The views expressed are personal