Down but not out? Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party confident amid setback

AAP's Goa President Amit Palekar says the Congress has voters but it has no cadre. Therefore, AAP has chance

“Reinvent? We don’t need to reinvent ourselves. Our numbers may have gone down but our supporters are still with us,” Amit Palekar, chief of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) unit in Goa, told Business Standard on the phone from Panjim. 

Despite the precipitous loss of seats in Delhi in the Assembly elections (down from 62 seats to 22), Palekar asserts that the AAP got 43.57 per cent of the vote, just 4 per cent less than the share of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is now in government in Delhi. (Along with its allies, the BJP got 47.15 per cent.) He concedes that the more accurate measure is the 10 per cent slide in the vote percentage the party clocked in the last Assembly polls (53.57 per cent), and that introspection is needed. But he asserts that the AAP retains its cachet for “honest” politics and will live by those principles, despite the Delhi loss.

  Others in the party are less idealistic, more practical. A functionary associated with the AAP’s Dialogue and Development Commission, once its crucial think tank, says the party’s governance template in Delhi was education, health, and power. “We

have a government in Punjab. We will implement our learning in Delhi in Punjab with greater vigour than before,” he said. 

Challenges are looming on the horizon. On the political front, there is near unanimity among the party’s top leaders that the party should give a wide berth to the Bihar Assembly polls, due later this year because there it has no real political capital.  Instead, it should consolidate itself in Punjab, Goa, and Gujarat, while playing the role of a vigorous Opposition in Delhi.

In Punjab, despite being in power, the AAP’s performance in recent elections has not been spectacular. In November last year, it lost the Barnala Assembly byelection to the Congress. Barnala is the home district of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, AAP Punjab President Aman Arora, and State Finance Minister Harpal Cheema. Its performance in the civic body elections held in December 2024 in the state was underwhelming: It could secure a clear-cut majority in only one corporation, in Patiala, out of five. Arora sought to put a gloss on the performance. “We were zero. We now have 55 per cent of the seats,” he said. Where the AAP lost, in most cases, it played second fiddle to the Congress.

  And this, Palekar says, is the biggest problem. “I managed the INDIA alliance campaign for our party in Maharashtra. Here, in Goa we are good friends with our counterparts in the Congress. In Maharashtra, we were working for the Congress, but the Congress was not always working for us.”

  Palekar says the Congress has voters. But it has no cadre. “At some point Congress voters realise that a vote for the Congress is an indirect vote for the BJP. When we are in the game, that is our biggest gain — plus the fact that we believe in honest politics. That is why in 2027 (when elections are due in Goa) we might be a better choice for voters than the Congress.”

  The AAP has maintained friendly relations with others in the INDIA alliance. Trinamool Congress parliamentarian Mohua Moitra campaigned extensively for the AAP’s Vishesh Ravi in the Karol Bagh Assembly constituency in Delhi. He acknowledged her help in his victory speech. Iqra Hasan, Samajwadi Party Lok Sabha member from Kairana, campaigned for both Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia. Trinamool’s Shatrughan Sinha joined former CM Atishi’s campaign in Kalkaji.

  On governance, the AAP will take initiatives in Punjab though some promises it had made are yet to be implemented. Party leaders say mohalla clinics have proved a boon to families hit by drug abuse. There are 800 clinics in the state and more are to open. The 600-unit free-power scheme is in place and the “quality of power is better than in many neighbouring states including Haryana”. But the party is yet to deliver on providing the ₹1,000 per month grant to women.

  Media entrepreneur Kanhaiya Singh has studied the AAP in detail. His assessment is that Kejriwal started the AAP with the approach of a startup entrepreneur — identifying a gap in the political system, offering an innovative solution, and initially disrupting the market. “The AAP was launched via crowdfunding, attracting young professionals and idealists, similar to a startup securing early investors and top talent. In 2013, it was seen as India’s biggest political startup. By 2022, it had become a political unicorn, securing a massive 79 per cent majority in the Punjab Assembly. However, like many unicorn startups that struggle with scaling, governance and financial management, the AAP is now facing turbulence.” To address this, the party should embark on “rebranding and retargeting” and Kejriwal “must adopt a founder’s mindset”.