AAP thwarts BJP’s plan of reshaping the party system

THE recent release on bail of the three arrested Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders — Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh — indicates that the BJP’s move to alter the reconfiguration of India's party system has been thwarted for now. Earlier, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, arrested similarly, had been released by the SC. Importantly, the SC had passed strong strictures against the misuse of the central investigating agencies — the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) — by the Union Government in the process.

These incarcerations indicate significant processes and trends in the thwarting of the reconfiguration of India's party system which has been going on since 1989, when the decline of the Congress began, following the loss suffered by Rajiv Gandhi in the ninth General Election.

The strengthening of the AAP since its founding in November 2012 was an addition to the process of the reconfiguration of the party system. The process has continued through the 10 General Election since, during which the Indian party system has emerged as a federalised bipolar system from a one-party dominant one.

The electoral data of the parties till 2009 indicates a strong one-third presence of the regional/state parties. There was a process of fusion and fission of parties through defections, mergers, coalitions and the creation of new parties.

The sixteenth General Election in 2014 returned the one-party dominant system and a decline of the state parties. After 10 years of the majoritarian party system, with subjugated coalition with some state parties, the eighteenth General Election in 2024 introduced a sharp turn. The BJP is still dominant in the NDA, with the JD(U), TDP and JD(S) willingly playing second fiddle. But a fading Modi sheen and a blurring Hindu-Muslim binary of the BJP could change the equation any time.

The AAP succeeded in being recognised by the Election Commission as a national party following its victory in the Punjab elections and gaining some votes in a few more states. But it lacks a pan-India political and electoral appeal.

Pragmatically, it has become party to the coalition process by joining the INDIA, the alliance forged by the Congress. As an INDIA component, the AAP also contested, though unsuccessfully, the Delhi parliamentary seats.

However, the contradictory signals emerging from both AAP and Congress in the Delhi Assembly politics, Haryana elections and Punjab raise questions on the party and the emerging direction of the Indian coalition politics.

The Congress was in alternation politics in Delhi (with the BJP) and Punjab (with the Shiromani Akali Dal); it would like to regain that position.

The arrest, release and resignation of Kejriwal as Delhi Chief Minister are significant developments that deserve to be placed in perspective to construe and situate the AAP in the emerging party system in the country.

The party was founded on November 26, 2012 by Kejriwal along with a flock of activists who collaborated with him in the India Against Corruption Movement during 2011-12. The high-pitched movement during the reign of Manmohan Singh's UPA government took Anna Hazare, an ecological and rural reconstruction activist from Maharashtra's remote Ralegan Siddhi village, as its face. The movement was supported in the background by the BJP and the RSS to discredit and pull down Delhi's Sheila Dikshit and nationally, the UPA government.

The strategy succeeded in the long run, but it was Kejriwal, a former Indian Revenue Service officer, who succeeded in forming a party with activist-academic Yogendra Yadav and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, along with several others. It ousted Sheila Dikshit less than a year after its formation during the elections to the Delhi Legislative Assembly and formed the government in coalition with the same Congress that it had ousted.

Kejriwal's confused politics from the opposition space led to his resignation, but he returned in the next 2015 elections, winning 67 of the 70 seats. He has continued with his government-in-perpetual-protest mode since.

Significantly, his and the party's emergence was based on the concepts of one leader, 'honesty' and 'difference'. First Anna Hazare was dropped unceremoniously, then Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were eased out. The Jan Lokpal Act, with an absolutist conception of 'honesty', was criticised by jurist Shanti Bhushan. The first Lokpal, Admiral Ramdas, was soon fired by Kejriwal. Thus, the AAP emerged as a one-leader, intolerant-of-dissent party.

Kejriwal's conflictual strategy had a match in Narendra Modi, who strengthened the Delhi Lieutenant-Governor against the state government to neutralise him. In arresting Kejriwal and other senior leaders. the ED and the CBI were used to demolish the image of the leader and the party. He was eventually released on bail by the SC. It is under these circumstances that he aligned with the INDIA.

His resignation and appointment of Atishi as Chief Minister till his return — if they win the next Assembly elections — reflects his control over the party. Thus, in the process of the reconfiguring of the party system in India, the AAP has emerged as a spoke in the wheel. The politics of Kejriwal will be tested in the process.