
Kejriwal stormed onto the national stage in 2010 as part of the Jan Lokpal anti-corruption movement led by activist Anna Hazare. In 2012, he launched AAP which he said was the “result of our struggle against corruption”.
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Then, in the 2013 elections, the AAP and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged neck-and-neck, ending Congress’s dominance over the Capital’s politics. Kejriwal became chief minister with the support of the Congress.
He was only CM for 49 days and during that time, between December 2013 and February 2014, Kejriwal announced 20,000 litres of free water per month for every household and a power tariff reduction of 50 percent for Delhi residents using up to 400 units a month.
When the Aam Aadmi Party won 67 out of 70 seats in the early elections held in 2015, the New York Times called it a “smaller political earthquake” that had struck the nation’s Capital after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory in Lok Sabha elections a year earlier.
Months ahead of the 2020 assembly polls, Kejriwal unveiled more freebies for Delhi residents—free bus rides for women and free electricity up to 200 units—consolidating AAP’s stronghold over Delhi. The party secured 62 seats in elections that year.
However, the third term—its second full-term—was largely uneventful with no big policy announcements. Ahead of the 5 February assembly elections this year, he promised to raise the monthly allowance under the AAP government’s Mahila Samman Rashi scheme from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,100 for eligible women if the party returns to power.
He also unveiled a host of other freebies, including free healthcare for senior citizens, life insurance coverage and accident insurance for auto drivers, expansion of its old-age pension scheme, and a scholarship for Dalit students.
But voters remain skeptical of the promises and have also begun noticing the chinks in AAP’s governance.
In the last two weeks, ThePrint visited 21 slums, JJ resettlement colonies and lower-middle-class households across the length and breadth of Delhi. With 10 years in power, anti-incumbency seemed to have set in against the AAP government. But the corruption allegations against Kejriwal didn’t appear to have resonated on the ground, with people viewing it largely as a BJP political ploy.
While Kamal too agreed with the allegations that Kejriwal has not brought any impactful policies in the last few years, he blamed the lieutenant governor for it.
“He tries to bring policies but the Centre and L-G does not let him work. If you want the L-G to rule then why do you have elections?”
He still plans to vote for AAP in the upcoming assembly elections. “So then should we vote for the BJP that is not letting Delhi’s elected government work? They are doing gunda-gardi, and we should vote for them? It’s about the system.”
Voters unmoved by graft allegations
It wasn’t like Kamal was satisfied with all aspects of the Delhi government’s performance. For instance, he said, there was discontent among the residents over incumbent Jangpura MLA Praveen Kumar. “He did good work during the first term but didn’t do much in the third term. He has a negative impression here, that is why people were angry with him.”
Had AAP renamed Kumar as its candidate, the votes would’ve fallen, he said. But the party has fielded former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia this time.
“Sisodia has done really good work in education and there is sympathy for him,” he said. Sisodia spent nearly 17 months in jail in connection with both the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s investigation into alleged irregularities in the now-scrapped 2020-2021 Delhi excise policy. The Supreme Court granted him bail in August last year.
Kejriwal too was arrested by ED in the case in March last year, making him the first sitting CM to be arrested. At the time, Kejriwal and AAP leaders accused the BJP-led Centre of using central agencies to target opposition leaders.
He was granted bail later in September. His resignation led to senior AAP MLA Atishi being elevated to the post of CM.
Since then, a political row has engulfed the two parties with each accusing the other of spending extravagantly to build lavish residences. While the BJP has called the bungalow at 6 Flagstaff Road that the AAP national convenor occupied “Sheesh Mahal”, the AAP has called PM Modi’s residence “Raj Mahal”.
The accusations did not appear to have moved voters. In Valmiki basti, resident Lachcho, said, “When a person holds such a post, he lives in a Sheesh Mahal. Doesn’t Modi live in Sheesh Mahal?”
The basti lies under the New Delhi constituency where Kejriwal is the incumbent. This time too he is contesting from the seat and is pitted against BJP’s Parvesh Verma and the son of former CM Sheila Dikshit, Congress candidate Sandeep Dikshit.
However, many governance issues have left people doubting their support for the ruling party.
Twelve kilometres away from Valmiki basti, in Karpuri Thakur Jan Jivan Camp, under the Kalkaji assembly constituency, a group of women huddle around a bench in an open ground in the heart of the camp. They were upset over governance lapses in their colony.
“Nobody has been able to give us drinking water. We have to go to Jal Vihar, Nehru Nagar, Niwaspuri to get drinking water…Everybody just makes promises during elections, nobody does anything for us,” 60-year-old Geeta Devi told ThePrint. “They forget us right after elections, who do we trust then?”
In the last two elections, she voted for Kejriwal.
“He gave us hope, said he’ll show us a leela (divine play), but didn’t even show us a natak (a drama),” she said.
However, they were still considering giving Kejriwal another chance.
“He has done some work for us. This ground we’re standing on, Atishi ma’am got this park made. It used to be a swamp, but now kids can play here,” explained 38-year-old Sangeeta Devi.
She added that she planned to continue voting for Kejriwal till the time her children—three daughters and a son—continue getting a good education at government schools.
“Whoever’s child here is going to a government school, they will vote for Kejriwal…This time all the children have received free uniforms and books, Atishi ma’am got that done, otherwise, it used to be so expensive,” she said.
Atishi won the Kalkaji constituency in the 2020 assembly elections. She filed her nomination from the same constituency for the upcoming elections and is pitted against senior BJP leader Ramesh Singh Bidhuri and Alka Lamba from Congress.
The women in this camp were clear that PM Modi was their only choice for the general elections. “But if you hand over both Delhi and the Centre to the same person, your work would never happen,” Devi said.
In East Delhi’s Geeta Colony, 24-year-old Nisha, a resident of Safeda basti, said that she had 5 children and has applied for ration cards for the past three years, but hasn’t received them, blaming the AAP government.
“Initially they did a lot. Made dawakhanas (clinics), doctors were also working well. But nothing is working anymore. We never had a medical store earlier, we got mohalla clinics, bathrooms…But now nobody listens to us,” she told ThePrint.
In a political showdown last year, Delhi L-G V.K. Saxena directed the chief secretary to probe the AAP government’s alleged failure to issue ration cards to 90,000 poor people. In response, AAP had called the allegations “baseless, malicious, concocted and mischievous”.
However, Nisha held the Krishna Nagar constituency representative S.K. Bagga. AAP has now fielded his son, Vikas Bagga, as the candidate for the seat.
The ‘aam aadmi‘ image
Kejriwal’s anti-corruption ideology, which unseated the Sheila Dikshit government in 2013, came into question during the AAP government’s third term, especially with the alleged excise policy scam engulfing not only senior leaders, then excise minister Sisodia and AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, but the CM himself.
The BJP has also raised questions over his ‘aam aadmi’ image that resonated with Delhi residents over the past decade, releasing videos of the gym, sauna room, jacuzzi and expensive chandeliers at 6 Flagstaff Road bungalow.
However, political analyst Chandrachur Singh said that many Indian leaders have been electorally successful despite corruption charges.
“I don’t think these corruption charges really matter to the voters,” Singh told ThePrint.
This appears to be vindicated by the sentiment on the ground. Rekha, a resident of Mehrauli’s Motilal Nehru Camp, said, “We have faith in him.”
“His time feels like Indira Gandhi’s time. There were allegations against her too. But Kejriwal is the best for us,” the 48-year-old said.
However, Singh said, the impact of the allegations may be more strongly felt among middle-class voters.
“Even though he might continue to have that support from the lowest class because of his schemes, there is some kind of dilution of his vote bank in the middle class to a large extent, and to a certain extent in the lower middle class also.”
Explaining why, Singh said that while Kejriwal rose to power on the back of a social movement which targeted the Congress for corruption that also contributed to Narendra Modi coming to power in 2014, he has not been able to maintain momentum.
“What has happened is Modi continued with that momentum that he got because of the anti-corruption movement against the Congress, combining it with governance issues, along with issues of nationalism, and Hinduism,” Singh said. “But what happened in the case of Kejriwal is that he started floundering and losing steam very soon.”
The problem, he said, lies in the fact that from an idealist platform, Kejriwal started moving into realpolitik very early on, making his aspirations clear.
“From thereon, it is a total slip on everything he had promised,” Singh said.
‘Everything except governance’
The elections will also be a scorecard of AAP’s performance on civil issues. In 2022, AAP the party won the high-stakes battle for control over the Delhi Municipal Corporation (MCD), ending BJP’s 15-year control of the local body.
The two years since have been far from smooth, with the two parties constantly at odds. Tussle over mayoral polls and elections for the 18-member Standing Committee, without whose approval no civic services over Rs 5 crore can be approved, several civic issues have gone unaddressed.
45-year-old Seema, who manages a kirana store in Mehrauli’s Motilal Nehru Camp, highlighted a list of issues that have plagued the locality, including the lack of cleaning of sewers and waterlogging during monsoons.
Meanwhile, 23 km away, 22-year-old Jyoti also said that the area around her jhuggi in East Delhi’s Safeda Basti has not been cleaned in the last 10 years, pointing at the open sewer running across the lane. She said the Delhi government had two washrooms built in 2022, but they haven’t been maintained since then.
“It’s not clean at all. Men peek through the washroom doors, it’s all broken. There is no water either,” she added.
Political analysts said Kejriwal’s lack of focus on governance has weakened his support base in the Capital.
“He came with some hope, but he couldn’t really consolidate that into the presence that he could’ve had,” said Singh.
“Kejriwal is everything except governance now. That is where the dent is.”
However, several of these residents still blame the Centre, as well as Kejriwal’s arrest for the slowdown in the city’s governance.
Old policies still hold sway
Many residents still associate Kejriwal with the three freebies—electricity, water, and bus rides—he introduced in his second term and the government’s work on mohalla clinics and government schools.
In its decade-long rule over the national capital, AAP has set up over 500 mohalla clinics across Delhi, bolstering its health infrastructure. It also claims to have “revolutionised” the city’s education system, including training programmes for teachers and infrastructure development.
It is the memory of this that appeared to be bolstering his chances. While 57-year-old Geeta colony resident, Devaki, felt that no party had done anything for them, she is still grateful to Kejriwal for “saving” her husband after he accidentally drank acid in 2022.
“The private hospital said that it’ll take around 50-55 lakh to give him medical treatment. So we rushed to LNJP (Lok Nayak Hospital). Everything was taken care of there by Kejriwal (Delhi government),” she recalled, perched in front of their makeshift cycle repair shop.
“He is helping my husband like a son, giving him treatment,” she added.
In East Delhi’s New Seelampur, the wall in front of 55-year-old Gulshan’s house was a reminder of pre-Kejriwal times. The ground beyond the wall used to be her family’s refuge when there used to be no electricity at home.
“We used to spread a chatai (mat) and sleep outside. There was no light…Even if he doesn’t give us a penny of the promise Rs. 2100, we would still vote for him.”
“Paise se vote nahi dete, dil se dete hain (We don’t vote with money, we vote from our hearts).”
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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