JALANDHAR: AAP’s defeat in Delhi has added to the political fluidity in Punjab, where the decline of the ruling party’s graph was already evident in the parliamentary elections last year. Except for BJP, no other party has made any significant gains in vote share.
AAP had also failed to win a majority on its own in any of the municipal corporations, except Patiala. Later, it managed to have its mayors and presidents in other municipal bodies by engineering defections.
While the promises of 300 units of free power and Rs 1,000 for every woman, the much-touted ‘Delhi model’, and disenchantment of people with old parties worked in AAP’s favour in the 2022 assembly elections, it was clear from the results of the 2024 parliamentary elections that freebies would not be enough to remain in the race for long.
The party needed to deliver on bigger issues of the state and good governance. The drop in vote share in two years was drastic, from 42% in 2022 to 26% in 2024, even as, except for the BJP, no other party could phenomenally increase its vote share.
Chief minister Bhagwant Mann, who earlier coined the slogan of 13-0 and claimed that his party would win all 13 seats of the Lok Sabha, later sought to compare the performance with 2019 parliamentary election results. AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal’s defeat from his own seat has blemished his political brand at a time when CM Mann’s govt is already facing questions over performance — ranging from mounting debt and extortions to drug menace, illegal mining and scores of other issues.
The Lok Sabha elections and the municipal election results show that Mann’s charisma as a vote catcher has ebbed significantly.
The contrast gets starker, as AAP took the credit for defeating big guns in Punjab in 2022 polls, including former chief ministers Parkash Singh Badal and Capt Amarinder Singh, sitting CM Charanjit Singh Channi from two seats, former deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal, and Navjot Singh Sidhu, who had not lost any election till then.
What should be more worrying for the ruling party is that scores of Punjabi netizens, who don’t owe allegiance to other parties and several included AAP’s supporters at different times from 2013 to 2022, did not hesitate to express satisfaction with the Delhi results, not due to BJP’s victory but due to AAP’s resounding defeat.
The results in Delhi and such reactions in Punjab are like a double whammy for AAP. The party would need to go back to the drawing board not only for Delhi but also for Punjab, with it requiring to make radical changes in the functioning of its govt in Punjab and its template.