In UP, AAP can reach a figure Modi can only dream about

Ever since Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) decided on Tuesday to take the plunge in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, its offices have sprung up, as if by the stroke of a magic wand, in various parts of India. Not only that, it also started a membership drive which saw a massive response and began taking fresh donations for the LS polls.

Now experts suggest that it is unlikely to contest all 543 seats in such a short time, but whatever it manages to do will be a treat to watch.

Founded less than a year before the Delhi Assembly polls, AAP has already passed its biggest test. In Delhi, the odds against the party were heavy. First, it had to quite gingerly steer clear of the controversies arising out of the opposition from Gandhian Anna Hazare who had alleged that funds collected for India Against Corruption were being used by AAP.

The Delhi challenge

Major political parties tried writing off the newbie in unequivocal terms. While former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit called AAP a "bunch of broom-wielding people from Ghaziabad". BJP's PM nominee and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi whose rallies in Delhi were increased from two to six at the eleventh hour accused Kejriwal of backstabbing Hazare for his political gains.

Speaking at his Seemapuri rally on November 30, Modi said, "Many years, after the JP movement, Anna Hazare blew the bugle against corruption. We were hopeful that people would get rid of corruption….But, some people backstabbed such a sacred movement of Anna Hazare for their own personal political aspirations and the whole agitation came to an end."

BJP kept terming AAP and its leaders Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai and others as Congress' agents and said they are only a "vote-cutter" party.

In the face of a high-voltage political campaign launched by Modi, political experts believed the voter might keep away from AAP for the fear of its vote going waste. In keeping with this, most opinion and exit polls failed to get a feel of the voter's pulse.

The trendsetter's arrival

The results showed how everybody from politicians to experts got it wrong. Even while BJP emerged on the top of the list with 31 seats, its vote share had dwindled. A repoll is sure to change the numbers. If done anytime soon, it could very well spell doom for the saffron party.

More important than its sheer 28 seats, AAP has emerged as the trendsetter in the Delhi elections. Its rules are defining the post-poll gambit here. All of a sudden, power has ceased to be a favourite for the BJP. Everybody is scrambling to sit in the Opposition. That's a heartening trend.

That's AAP's biggest victory.

Let's look what and how much it can upset in the 2014 LS polls.

BSP's urban vote share

The trends emerging out of Delhi polls indicate AAP can cause a major upset in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh which incidentally has the highest number of 80 seats in the Lok Sabha.

Other than damaging Congress the maximum and reducing it to laughable numbers, AAP has found the next worst victim in Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party.

The BSP vote share in Delhi dwindled from 14.05 per cent in 2008 to just 5.35 per cent in 2013. That's a steep three-fifths fall.

Now even if it is assumed that caste identities are not that strong in urban centres like Delhi, it is likely that AAP can at least make a dent into BSP's urban vote share in UP.

More importantly, BSP mostly gained in the past as it is likely to do in the 2014 LS polls on the anti-incumbency factor against the ruling Samajwadi Party. Other than its caste-based votes which have always remained intact, it has got anti-Samajwadi Party votes which have catapulted it into power every time.

If AAP can make a dent into BSP's core vote bank in the urban centres and take away all of its anti-SP vote share, the thunder of BSP is stolen.

Now, let's see how AAP can take away that anti-SP vote share.

The minority vote

The Delhi polls have shown Muslims voted in significant numbers for AAP, which again shows that identity politics is fraying at the edges in cities. Coupled with this is the fiasco of the Muzaffarnagar riots that stares SP in the face.

Thousands of Muslims, who are still languishing in relief camps in western UP, blame it on the failure of the state government to protect them during riots.

The SP might have missed reading the writing on the wall in the aftermath of violence, but a local MP got it right. Sompal Shastri, who was a candidate of SP from Baghpat, refused to contest Lok Sabha polls under the party banner. In a letter to Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shastri said he was not in a position to contest the Lok Sabha polls from Baghpat after the violence.

Things have exacerbated to such an extent that at SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav's October 31 Azamgarh rally, the traditional skull cap-wearing Muslims, who used to be a regular feature at the SP's earlier rallies in the state, were missing.

Sensing the mood of the gathering, the party had made an exception in the rally. Cabinet minister Azam Khan, the Muslim face of the party, addressed the gathering after Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav unlike in the past. Khan played on Modi's puppy remark against the community and held the crowd for some time.

It was Khan, and not the Yadav duo, who made a mention of the recent Muzaffarnagar riots. Khan vowed not to celebrate any happy occasion till all those riot victims in relief camps returned home.

Frustration is writ large on the face of Yadav who on Wednesday dismissed AAP as a bubble and said "it has emerged and will disappear from the surface on its own".

The truth is otherwise.

The SP not only failed to retain its two Assembly seats in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, but also lost badly on the percentage of votes the party had polled in Delhi and Chhattisgarh on the seats from which it had fielded its candidates. After the debacle, Yadav dissolved the party's units in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party knows it can get away by peddling scare stories about Modi among the community who stopped voting for the Congress ever since the Babri demolition in 1992. A lack of options for Muslims and not SP's performance forces them to vote for the party.

AAP's presence in UP can change that. At least in the present circumstances, this large vote bank is there for the taking.

A vote share of the BSP coupled with all of the Congress's and the minority votes can put AAP into the front seat in Uttar Pradesh. It can reach a figure in the tally that Modi can only dream of.

The above is from the Economic Times