How Much Does Mighty BJP Fear Arvind Kejriwal?

New Delhi: (Ashutosh joined the Aam Aadmi Party in January 2014. The former journalist took on former Union minister Kapil Sibal and Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in the national election from Chandni Chowk in Delhi.)

The battle for Delhi has acquired iconic proportions. A small state which does not even have full statehood is turning out to be a major headache for the BJP and Mr. Modi.

In the last three weeks, the BJP has changed its strategy three times. Every trick has fallen flat. In the latest media blitz, BJP president Amit Shah has tried his level best to hide his nervousness while boasting about garnering a 2/3rd majority. I honestly had a good laugh. Mr. Amit Shah, if Delhi were so easy then would you not need to announce to the whole world that half of Mr. Modi's cabinet colleagues have been deputed with election duties. Mr. Arun Jaitley has been brought in. He is considered to be the master strategician and is credited with winning many battles; though, he lost his own election in Amritsar.

According to reliable sources, Modi is very upset. He feels misled by the BJP state unit. He has apparently scolded them and even Amit Shah has not been spared. He was given the impression in the first week of January that Delhi will be a cake-walk as AAP is disintegrating and Arvind Kejriwal has lost the trust of people because he abandoned the responsibility of running Delhi.

The BJP was over-confident about Modi's popularity and believed that once he started campaigning, the inertia would give way to dynamism and the party would be victorious without much effort. But the Ram Lila rally on 10th January came as a big jolt. The crowd was much smaller than expected and the damage was done. The Modi myth was busted. The top honchos of BJP burnt the midnight oil and it was decided to shield Mr. Modi from taking the fall for a failure; if the BJP was to lose, then the blame could be shifted to someone else. Thus, overnight Ms Kiran Bedi was dropped from the sky onto the lap of the state unit; to the utter dismay of the BJP state leaders and cadre, she was declared as the chief ministerial candidate.
Just for two days an impression was created by BJP supporters that they had already won the war. Then came the third day. Ms Bedi started talking. She was all over TV channels. She was a delight for any TV anchor. It was obvious to even a novice that she had no idea about Delhi and was not at all a political being. The more she talked, the more damage she did to herself and to the party. She could not face tough questions. She got flustered and left a television interview in the middle. The interview NDTV's Ravish Kumar did with her effectively finished her as a political entity of any stature. His interview went viral.

The BJP realised that disaster had struck and a blunder had been committed. In the middle of the elections, Ms Bedi can't be recalled as a candidate. They have to live with her. Now, the BJP top brass has had to restrategise. A last attempt was made to salvage some prestige for the party. The state unit has been totally side lined. Amit Shah has taken command of the party. Jaitley was brought in as a last hope and put in charge of campaign and communication. Ministers have been given specific responsibilities. 120 MPs were requested to spread out in different constituencies and campaign. But it's too late.


Opinion polls which have always under-estimated AAP suddenly realised that the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Course correction started. They started showing a neck -and neck fight and those who refused to play political games showed that AAP was way ahead. One TV channel was more courageous. It came out with 50% vote share for AAP and 41% for the BJP. A gap of 9% is huge in electoral politics. If it true, then there is no safe passage for the BJP in the Capital.

The tension and desperation is palpable in the BJP camp. One does not need to be a genius to decipher that.  Advertisements released by the BJP on Friday morning in every newspaper in Delhi are proof enough; they are not only bad in taste but also expose the BJP and make it clear that it has nothing to offer to 'We Delhi'ites'. They do not have a concrete plan for the city. No agenda for development. Nothing to match the development blue print rolled out by AAP that it has been evolving for three months through its Delhi Dialogues. The BJP is not even releasing a party manifesto. Frankly speaking, the BJP has lost the plot.

I have been saying for a very long time that the Delhi battle will be different than the rest, because in Delhi, the fight is not between traditional parties with the same tricks and the same electoral understanding. Here the fight is between a party which believes in unorthodox politics as it is born to cleanse the ills of democracy and re-establish the pendulum of sanity in the political system.

The practitioners of traditional politics will find it difficult to understand that the Arvind army has a missionary zeal. They are not hungry for power. They are driven by the passion of idealism. They are aware that it's a tough project, but not impossible. Last year's victory should have been an eye-opener for every party, but unfortunately some people are still living in the old world, caught in a time warp. The new generation has brought new sensibilities and it requires new tools to fathom the depth of desperation in the present political set up. Amit Shah and Satish Upadhyay are too entrenched in the establishment. They can't deal with the new realities of life. Arvind does not suffer from these handicaps. He is the hope of millions and the Delhi battle will be the triumph of that hope.