Paanch Saal Kejriwal: AAP may be headed for a landslide victory in Delhi

by R Jagannathan  Jan 29, 2015 15:00 IST

The tide of political fortune seldom flows unidirectionally for too long. The tide that brought Narendra Modi  to power in May 2014 and seemed to overwhelm every party standing in its path is now hitting the rocks in Delhi. Arvind Kejriwal, who seemed to get nothing right in the first half of last year has now reversed his slide, aided by the complete misreading of his challenge in Delhi by the BJP.

The latest ABP Nres-Nielson opinion poll shows a 50-41 split favouring Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against the BJP, a sharp rise from a fortnight ago when the BJP was a nose ahead. If this poll has got it right, AAP is not only going to get a majority, but a landslide win. A rising near 10 percentage points difference in a largely two-horse race is unlikely to be reversed in the course of a week.

A HT-Cfore survey published today (29 January) shows AAP and BJP tied with 38 percent of the vote each. While this means all is not lost for the BJP and a fight will go down to the wire,  the momentum seems to be in AAP's direction taking all polls since December into account. So, unless something dramatic alters voters' minds over the next week before polling on 7 February, Kejriwal is still the man on the inside track.

So it is more than likely that on 10 February we will wake up to cries of "Paanch Saal Kejriwal". Barring an unforeseen miraculous shift in fortunes, Kejriwal's tenacity would have scored over Amit Shah's blunders. Shah, the man who had made winning a habit, may get his comeuppance this time.

What is going right for AAP and wrong for BJP all of a sudden?
In the main, it is obvious that Kejriwal made the right calls after his party's ignominious defeat in the Lok Sabha polls and ill-advised challenges to Modi from Gujarat to Varanasi.

The first call he made was to keep AAP away from all assembly contests and focussing exclusively on Delhi. This was shrewd for several reasons. A party that just lost almost everywhere needed to concentrate its efforts and limited resources in the one place it had the maximum chances of winning.

Kejriwal rightly calculated that losing once more in a state (Haryana) where the party was ill-prepared was not a risk worth taking. He calculated - correctly - that the BJP would be trying to win the bigger states. He concentrated his resources fully in the place the BJP had ignored till last month. He hit the enemy in his weakest spot, and he has gained as a result.

That he was helped by the BJP's strange mix of hubris and reluctance to give battle does not take anything away from what appears to be Kejriwal's likely win on 10 February. He would have earned this victory, assuming it happens as the polls predict.

The BJP developed an inexplicable ambivalence in Delhi despite winning 60 out of 70 assembly segments in the Lok Sabha elections. Logically, it should have administered the coup de grace by holding the Delhi assembly polls in June 2014 when AAP was staggering under defeat and demoralisation. The BJP's complete inability to grasp the chance must go down in history as possibly one of history's best examples of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Apart from the blunder of delay, which is likely to blot Amit Shah's all-win copybook so far, the BJP made three huge strategic errors that are simply unforgiveable.

First, it ignored the mess and infighting in the Delhi BJP till the end. With hindsight we can say that a rudderless state party should have been fixed first before if the idea was to delay the polls till after the other four assembly elections had been completed.

Second, the induction of Kiran Bedi into the party at the last minute now appears to have been a huge mistake. Not because she is a liability, but simply because there was too little time for the party to adjust to her and her to the party. Moreover, she appears inexperienced in electoral wordplay and seems a novice before the battle-tested Kejriwal. Kejriwal has spent two years in the trenches mixing with voters; Bedi has spent these two years in TV studios and in splendid isolation. She needed time to be coached on what to say and what not to, and also to acclimatise herself to the party she was joining. This lack of time and experience is costing her and the party.

I don't believe she is a misfit in politics; in fact, she is the right fit in the new politics of citizen involvement and improved governance. It is the old BJP which is in a time warp and needs change. Hopefully, the BJP will learn the right lessons the next time.

This writer also completely misread the impact of Kiran Bedi's entry and jumped to conclusion that she was a game-changer. But, as explained above, it may already have been too late.

Third, Amit Shah is now belatedly pulling out all the stops by pushing central ministers and state leaders to stem the tide in Delhi by campaigning in the segments they may have influence over. While I give him full marks for trying to make a real fight of it, the chances are this will be seen as a panic move. Such last-minute manoeuvres are seldom enough to pull back for a douuble-digit vote difference. Delhi also is not the sum of people from various states. At best, Shah can hope to prevent a Kejriwal landslide. But its like putting your finger in the dyke when the dam is about to burst.

I may be jumping the gun by prematurely declaring victory for Kejriwal, and may have egg on my face on 10 February, but analysis with hindsight is no analysis at all. Karl Marx was brilliant in explaining history and poor in predicting its future course. I hope I am not Karl Marx.
I believe this is a fight Kejriwal deserves to win and one that BJP deserves to lose.