The Dark Horse on the Throne

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The nation has largely been left stunned with the AAP sweeping away the Delhi elections, contrary to much speculation. And it is equally surprising to find Kejriwal leading his brigade to the throne even though the party was staunchly against forming a government. What raised even more eyebrows was the decision of AAP to invite public opinion on joining hands with Congress. After all, when AAP already had accumulated sufficient number of seats along with Congress to form a government, what was the need of asking the Delhi population whether they were justified in their stance?

Although Congress has promised to offer unconditional support to AAP with its eight members, yet the picture won’t be so rosy altogether. Congress has played its own moves, though poorly. Joining hands with Congress has left AAP at the mercy of the former to sustain the government for the next two months. Congress very well knows that mere two months would not be enough for AAP to fulfill the promises it has made to the public of Delhi. By aligning with AAP, Congress can hope to come up as a party that supports clean politics. Besides showing itself as non-communal, Congress can also hope to claw back some votes it has lost. The best bet for Congress is to give such a cutthroat competition to BJP that even if BJP wins in the Lok Sabha elections, it actually turns out to be a very slim win. In that case, BJP might not be able to function efficiently, purveying scope for Congress to bounce back after 2016-17.

However, Arvind Kejriwal has been quite clever in making his own moves. He has always reiterated that it is impossible to bring about any change sans the involvement of common masses. This way, he has set the ball rolling in the people’s court. By asking for the public opinion, they not only portrayed themselves to be concerned about the large consensus of the target population, but even in the future they can go back to people whenever there is any dilemma or whenever things go wrong. If the minority government turns out to be an absolute failure, still they can go back to people saying that it were the people who wanted to see them in power. By showing themselves to be not hungry for power, they can shift the blame of a failed government easily to the Delhi population. With this tactic, Congress can’t even think of backing out, since that would provoke reprimands by the common public, thus killing Congress’ hopes for a political revival.

It can be undoubtedly inferred that AAP has played quite smartly in the political arena, no matter how much the other parties call its ways a gimmick. It is now time to wait for the next two months to see how the minority government actually performs and whether it is able to redress the harm done by the preceding political parties in power, which Kejriwal had made one of the big agendas in his manifesto.

About the Author

130113-175943Arijit is an engineering student at University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Panjab University, Chandigarh. He is an avid content writer and is associated as a writer in the marketing department of AIESEC Chandigarh. He is also the Editor-in-chief at L@TEEN, the online newspaper module of Edurev. Moreover, he also takes keen interest in organizing activities at his institute. Being an executive member of the NGO Youth United, he has also worked as an organizing member of the event Smiling Future. He aims to be a social entrepreneur one day and work in cohesion with the people who want to be authors of a positive change in tomorrow’s world. Currently, he is working as the Associate, Planning for Alexis Centre for Public Policy and International Relations.

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