AAP surge proves people want 3rd option: CPM

‘What the Delhi result shows is that where there is a viable alternative to the Congress and the BJP, the people will support it,’ the CPM’s ‘People’s Democracy’ said in an editorial.

‘It remains to be seen what political programme the AAP will formulate and how it will consolidate its support base,’ it added.

The Bharatiya Janata Party retained power in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and snatched Rajasthan from the Congress. It finished as the single largest group in Delhi with 31 seats, followed by AAP’s 28.

The ‘unambiguous message’ of the elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi ‘is the outright rejection of the Congress’, the Communist Party of India-Marxist publication said.

It said that though there were serious corruption charges against ministers in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, the ‘Congress failed miserably in mobilising the popular discontent... The same situation prevailed in Chhattisgarh’.

And since the Congress failed to attract the voters, the BJP was ‘the beneficiary of the strong anti-Congress mood among the people’.

It said the BJP’s march to victory in Delhi was foiled by AAP, which won ‘support from the middle classes and substantial sections of the urban poor and the Scheduled Castes’.

But the CPM warned that to extrapolate any national trend from these election results would be erroneous as the four states account for only 72 Lok Sabha seats.

‘Both in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won a majority of these 72 seats, yet the NDA lost the elections.’