Stripped of power, Arvind Kejriwal's role in reviving AAP remains hazy

Face of AAP

Since the AAP’s rout in the Delhi assembly polls earlier this month, while Kejriwal shunned public glare, it was Atishi who launched daily offensives against the victorious BJP and its CM pick, Rekha Gupta. The Kalkaji MLA, as Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, ticks many right boxes for the AAP.

She enjoys Kejriwal’s confidence, is combative, articulate in both Hindi and English and ensures that the BJP’s CM choice doesn’t give the saffron party disproportionately high women outreach rights against its principal rival.

As Delhi’s ‘temporary CM’ for the last six months of the AAP regime, Atishi is also conversant in Delhi’s administrative matters. These are all credentials that should hold her and the AAP in good stead as it goes up against an unsparing BJP for the next five years.

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Multiple challenges

But, what of Kejriwal? The AAP convenor, who had built up the Delhi poll results as a referendum over his honesty in the backdrop of massive corruption allegations against him, not only lost his party’s government on February 8 but also his own seat, New Delhi. His closest aides, former deputy CM and architect of Delhi’s famed ‘education model’ Manish Sisodia and former minister Satyender Jain too lost from Jangpura and Shakur Basti, respectively.

The Delhi loss, despite the sizeable vote share of just over 43 per cent AAP clocked to win its 22 seats in the Assembly, is a catastrophic political blow to the party and its chief. Senior AAP leaders told The Federal that with power out of his hands for the first time since the party’s inception and legal battles in corruption cases still pending against him, Kejriwal has “multiple challenges” staring at him.

An AAP Rajya Sabha MP condensed the challenges awaiting Kejriwal into three broad categories. “Delhi is our janmabhoomi and karmabhoomi. Losing it to the BJP obviously creates an existential crisis so we have to work out a plan to rebuild the party. A 43 per cent vote share (just two points below BJP’s vote share) is a good base to start with. The second challenge is to keep our flock together, not just in Delhi but also in Punjab where we still have a government. We know that the BJP leadership will try all tricks to break our party and buy our MLAs," he told The Federal.

Further, he added that the last but most important thing is to figure out what role Arvind should take up now – should he seek a seat in the Rajya Sabha or should he take the moral high ground and shun public office while focussing on rebuilding the party?

"What are the correctives he should apply to our organisation and our political narrative,” said the Rajya Sabha MP.

Rajya Sabha route

A source close to Kejriwal said the AAP convenor was “seriously considering” the choice of entering the Rajya Sabha through a bypoll by getting one of the party’s Punjab MPs, most likely his trusted aide and election strategist Sandeep Pathak, to step down. However, some of Kejriwal’s advisors believe that this route has “serious flip sides” compared to “limited advantages”.

“If he chooses to go to Rajya Sabha, there are primarily two objectives this would serve. It would give him a platform to directly take on the Prime Minister and the BJP not just on issues of Delhi or Punjab but in national politics and it helps him share space with other top Opposition leaders in the House,” the source said.

The AAP leader, who has been closely involved with planning AAP’s electoral expansion beyond Delhi and Punjab, however, explained that the flip side to Kejriwal seeking a Rajya Sabha for himself may outweigh the benefits.

“If he takes a Rajya Sabha for himself while people like Manish and Satyender Jain continue to fight it out in the streets, it would show him as a leader who can’t survive without a post which is directly in contrast to what he did when he quit the CM’s post. Secondly, it would mean sending yet another outsider as MP from Punjab which our rivals will exploit. Also, if he gets one of our MPs to resign for him, it would send the message to other party MPs that their place in Rajya Sabha isn’t secure. Some of our Punjab MPs also fund the party; why would they continue doing so if the returns are uncertain... they might as well switch to the BJP, which we know is already trying to break our party,” the Kejriwal aide said.

Watch: Churn in Punjab politics after AAP's Delhi defeat?

Rebuilding AAP

A section of AAP leaders believe Kejriwal must “stay away from public office” for now and, instead, “focus on reinventing and rebuilding the AAP”.

“The Delhi election results show that our hold on voters from the economically weaker sections is still strong but we have lost confidence of a sizeable section of middle-classes as well as Dalits and minorities who supported us overwhelmingly in the past two elections. There is also an impression now because of all the corruption cases (against Kejriwal and his close aides) that we are like any other party. We have to work hard to dispel this impression and the only way this would be possible is if all top leaders, including Kejriwal, work 24X7 to rebuild the party... We have to go back to functioning like a movement but with a clear agenda; just being disruptive won’t help,” a former AAP minister told The Federal.

The ex-minister, however, conceded that in a party where decision-making isn’t collective but essentially concentrated with Kejriwal – “even Manish, Atishi, Sanjay Singh, Sandeep and Raghav Chaddha aren’t consulted on all matters”, he said – it remains to be seen whether the AAP convenor “takes the path most in the party want him to or does what he thinks is best”.

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Destabilising Punjab

With Delhi out of its hold, many in the AAP fear the BJP would now try to “destabilise” the party’s Bhagwant Mann-led government in Punjab. Though the saffron party remains hemmed in by a crisis of credibility in Punjab, sundry AAP leaders told the The Federal that the BJP’s lack of electoral heft in the state “won’t prevent it from creating problems for us”.

Sources said Kejriwal has already asked Mann to ensure that all poll promises the AAP made in the state during the 2022 polls are fulfilled post haste. Additionally, Kejriwal wants Mann to launch a “comprehensive crackdown” against corruption and drugs while also ending bureaucratic red-tape that has stalled or slowed down the delivery of AAP’s populist schemes in the state.

“As far as the performance of our government is concerned, the feedback from Punjab hasn’t been very positive. There are issues with law and order, rollout of various pro-people schemes, (campaign against) drugs, corruption in bureaucracy... the general view is that Mann is not in control; the recent case of Kuldeep Dhaliwal (found to be leading a ‘non-existent ministry’ for the past 20 months) has made us a laughing stock. Kejriwal wants Mann to get a grip of things so that a Punjab model can be built up as the better alternative to the BJP’s rule in Delhi and other states,” an AAP leader from Delhi with high political stakes in Punjab told The Federal.

Sources said a section of AAP leaders had even floated the idea of Kejriwal contesting the bypoll due in Punjab’s Ludhiana West assembly segment and, upon winning, taking over the reins of power from Mann.

Though the AAP is confident of wresting the seat that fell vacant following the demise of incumbent party MLA Gurpreet Gogi, sources said Kejriwal has dismissed pleas of party colleagues to contest for the bypoll as he neither wants to risk an electoral upset so soon after losing the New Delhi seat nor does he want to give fodder to his critics who dub him a power-hungry politician.

Also read: Arvind Kejriwal's hubris led to AAP's debris

Not many options

“If you think rationally, there aren’t too many options he (Kejriwal) has... the best way forward would be to continue leading the party, reinventing and rebuilding it. If he seeks a Rajya Sabha or even takes up the challenge of the Ludhiana bypoll, he will only lose credibility; not only the BJP but even ordinary people will question why he is running after a post,” another AAP leader said.

This leader said while it is now settled that Atishi will be the face of the AAP against the BJP in the Delhi Assembly, Kejriwal will continue to decide the political and electoral expansion roadmap for his party by effecting a rejig of the AAP’s National Executive and Political Affairs Committee.

What Kejriwal’s own role will be in this scheme, however, remains unclear.