Poll games: Making AAP victim... will only hurt Congress

NT Correspondent

New Delhi: Many in the BJP believe that the CBI’s arrest of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia over an alleged excise scam might be to make a martyr out of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), help it claim an even greater share of the Opposition’s votes and weaken anti-BJP forces. Moreover, the arrest also diminishes AAP by taking away and tainting one of its tallest leaders.

This comes at a time when Congress had been gathering nationwide attention owing to Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ and many in the saffron party believe that the timing of the arrest is significant.

Others anticipate a scaling up in the attacks against AAP by the BJP, which would give the former the ability to claim persecution and elicit sympathy from voters. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is believed to be the next target in the ruling party’s crosshairs.

‘Gujarat model’ at play?

It is being whispered that the ploy was formulated in the backdrop of the success that the BJP managed in the Gujarat Assembly elections, owing to AAP’s nearly 13 per cent vote share and victory in five seats, which had hamstrung Congress.

For context, Congress had bagged 77 seats and a 42 percent vote share in the 2017 Assembly polls in Gujarat. These figures dropped to 16 seats and 27.3 percent vote share respectively in the 2022 elections in the state. In 2017, AAP had fielded candidates in only 29 seats, won none and managed a 0.1 percent vote share.

However, they contested all 182 seats in the western state and might have helped BJP win in 50 seats, going by Election Commission’s vote breakdown. BJP on the other hand had managed 99 seats and 50 percent vote share in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections.

These tallies improved to 152 seats and 52.5 percent vote share. People within the saffron party believe that AAP doesn’t have a significant presence outside Delhi and Punjab, where they can win outright. Even these states were wrested from Congress.

However, it is believed the Arvind Kejriwal-led party is capable of siphoning away a significant amount of votes from Congress and other principal challengers to BJP and in doing so help the saffron party’s electoral fortunes in poll-bound states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Some in the BJP believe that if AAP eats into the Opposition vote in the 2024 general election, it will yield positive results for the saffron party.

AAP ambivalence

AAP has also adopted the strategies of either ignoring BJP’s communal politics or even co-opting it. In last year’s Gujarat election, none in the party opposed the release of the con- victs in the Bil- k i s Bano rape case, answering questions on the same with the retort that they focused on “real issues” such as education, health and jobs, weakening the fight against communalism.

At other times, the party has opposed Shaheen Bag and blamed riots on “BJP settling Rohingyas” in Delhi. Others believe the strategy of promoting AAP by way of optics to hurt Congress and other challengers to the BJP amounted to a convoluted conspiracy theory. They believe Sisodia’s arrest was significant to Delhi’s politics only since BJP wanted to wrest Delhi from AAP in the 2025 polls.