AAP to return to its roots of disruptive politics to take on BJP in Delhi

After an over decade-long reign, as Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party finds itself on the Delhi Assembly’s Opposition benches for the first-time ever, does it have a strategy to withstand the ruling BJP’s assaults, and more importantly, to fight back and recover lost ground?

The unusual scenes witnessed during the second day of the three-day inaugural session of the Delhi Assembly portend ominous tidings for the AAP. The suspension of 15 AAP MLAs, including Leader of Opposition Atishi, from Tuesday’s (February 25) sitting – unprecedented for an inaugural Assembly session – coincided with Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena’s all-out attack on the previous regime during his address to the newly-constituted Assembly.

14 CAG reports

Soon after Saxena’s address, Delhi CM Rekha Gupta tabled a CAG report which accused the AAP regime of causing an over ₹2,000-crore loss to the exchequer through its controversial excise policy. The Gupta-led Delhi cabinet had, at its first meeting last week, decided to table in the Delhi Assembly 14 CAG reports it claimed the AAP had suppressed.

With the Assembly’s inaugural session set to conclude on Wednesday (February 26), it remains to be seen whether the remaining CAG reports will all be tabled at one go. The BJP could also stretch the process out to torment the AAP with allegations of financial and administrative impropriety in politically-convenient installments.

Also Read: 15 AAP MLAs suspended in Delhi Assembly amid CAG report showdown

Tuesday’s events, alongside the attacks being hurled at the AAP from the BJP brass since the February 8 poll results, have made it clear that the saffron party, back in power in Delhi after a 27-year hiatus, will give its principal rival no quarter.

With its heavy-hitters, including Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Somnath Bharti, and Saurabh Bhardwaj losing the polls, the AAP will have to rely on the combative faces it now has as MLAs to launch its counterstrikes against the BJP in the Assembly.

Party sources told The Federal that while Atishi will be the face of the AAP’s offensive against the BJP regime in the House, other legislators such as Gopal Rai, Kuldeep Kumar, Amanatullah Khan, Jarnail Singh, and Sanjeev Jha will provide the additional firepower the LoP needs to take on the BJP’s formidable shouting brigade that includes not just MLAs like OP Sharma, Ravinder Negi, Arvinder Singh Lovely, and Satish Upadhyay but also practically the entire state cabinet and the Chief Minister.

‘Our voice will be muzzled’

Given how Tuesday’s proceedings went in the Assembly – Speaker Vijender Gupta summoned marshals to remove any AAP MLA from the House who so much as uttered a word during the LG’s address – the AAP is convinced that the Treasury Benches and the Speaker “will muzzle our voice” in the Assembly.

“Have you ever seen mass suspension of MLAs during an inaugural session? We only demanded an answer on why the government disrespected Babasaheb Ambedkar and Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh by replacing their photos in the CM’s and other offices with Narendra Modi’s photo? Does this question warrant suspension from the Assembly? The BJP wants to run the Delhi Assembly like it runs Parliament… They got 150 MPs suspended from Parliament earlier and now they are doing the same in Delhi; they want to silence the Opposition and bulldoze the Assembly,” AAP MLA Sanjeev Jha, who was among the 15 suspended MLAs, told The Federal.

Also Read: BJP, AAP spar over Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh portraits at Delhi CM office

AAP’s two-pronged strategy

As such, the AAP, say party sources, is firming up a strategy to counter the BJP aggressively outside the Assembly through a two-pronged approach. This, a senior AAP leader told The Federal, involves “maximising the scope of populist schemes” that are within the purview of the AAP-controlled Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and “returning to our roots; launching agitations, sitting on dharnas, and being among the people”.

“We may have lost the Assembly polls but we still have a majority in the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi), which gives us a lot of scope to keep working for the people of Delhi. We will not let the BJP fool Delhiites with excuses for not being able to fulfill promises they made during the poll campaign. When we were in government, we gave the Delhi Model that got praised internationally and soon everyone will envy our MCD model also,” AAP’s Mukesh Goel, leader of the House in the MCD, told The Federal.

On Monday (February 24), in a major populist move, the AAP-led MCD announced a slew of concessions for Delhiites who file House Tax. That the party got senior Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh to announce the concessions given by the municipal body – write-off of all past house tax dues for homeowners who file the current financial year’s tax within time, fully exempting residents with residential properties of less than 100 square yards from filing house tax, etc. – indicated that the AAP plans to use its MCD majority as a political counterweight to the BJP’s Delhi government.

Also Read: AAP left coffers empty but women to get Rs 2,500 as promised: Delhi CM

A senior AAP leader even remarked sarcastically, “Let Rekha Gupta and her ministers have fun running the Delhi government… thanks to the BJP, today the MCD has more powers in some areas of governance than the state government; even in matters where the Delhi government has powers, the CM will have to basically wait for the LG’s clearance and, in some cases, she will also need the MCD’s co-operation. But since the powers of the MCD are clearly defined, we can go ahead with pro-people policies in civic matters without the LG’s interference.”

‘BJP’s promises are empty, not treasury’

The AAP is also somewhat buoyant over aspects of the LG’s address to the Assembly on Tuesday that alluded to Delhi’s dwindling financial health, which in turn were an extension of Rekha Gupta’s recent claim that the “Delhi treasury is empty”.

Former AAP MLA Durgesh Pathak said, “It hasn’t even been a month since they won the election and the LG and the Delhi CM are already making excuses to not fulfill promises they made during the campaign. Everyone knows that Delhi has always posted surplus revenue; all the proof is present in the budget documents our government presented in the Assembly. So why is the CM saying the treasury is empty? It’s only their promises that are empty.”

“They said in their first cabinet meeting they will approve the rollout of ₹2,500 monthly allowance for women, but they are yet to do that. In his address to the Assembly, which is prepared by the government, the LG reiterated all the promises the BJP made about increasing pension, giving LPG cylinder for ₹500 and so on, but he didn’t give any timeline. We will not let them fool the people of Delhi with these jumlas, we will protest from the streets to the Assembly to force the BJP to keep its promises,” added Pathak, a key aide of AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal.

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

Back to its roots

Many in the AAP believe that the party needs to return to its “original form”, hinting that the anarchist ways with which Kejriwal and his colleagues first caught the attention of Delhi, and indeed the rest of the country, could soon find a revival.

“If we have been tasked by the Delhi voter to sit in Opposition, then we will show what a real Opposition should be like. We can’t be like the Congress party, which thinks doing some press conferences and a token protest march is enough to call itself the opposition. We have to be aggressive, be on the ground, be disruptive when needed. Of course, if the government does something in Delhi’s interest, we will also support; we are a party that came out of a movement, but when we were in power, things changed. We have to go back to our roots now to rebuild AAP,” said a party leader who narrowly lost the recent polls.