AAP quake creates havoc in Delhi
9 Dec 2013 6:20 AM IST
The outfit, which evolved out of Anna Hazare’s movement for the Jan Lokpal Bill of 2011 and launched his political party only in November 2012, beat all expectations, predictions and speculations to come out as the second largest party in Delhi, trailing the BJP closely. The Congress finished a distant third, ending incumbent chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s 15-year-long innings in the national capital.
AAP’s emergence has left Delhi assembly hung for the first time in its political history. BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Dr Harsh Vardhan has stated that he was not going to form the government if he did not have the numbers. The situation has arisen as the new political outfit indeed proved to be the X-factor (http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=45765) in crystallising people’s anger against price rise (http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=44724) and a complete non-response from government in handing the issues related to inflated
power bills. AAP not just energised the youth to vote for it but also made the poor and the schedule castes in the national Capital shift their generation-long loyalty from the Congress to the new outfit. The broom (AAP’s poll symbol) became the iconic tool to clean the Augean Stable.
The Congress vote share has come down by 15 per cent from 2008. The Sheila Dikshit government completely failed to read the writing on the wall. The BJP, thanks to the intervention of Narendra Modi at the last moment, managed to bring in a clean face in Dr Harsh Vardhan and stopped AAP from getting a complete walkover. Modi’s influence on the party campaign was very prominent in the Capital and all through the BJP campaign chief made it very clear that he associated closely with the ENT surgeon.
Besides Delhi, Modi must have noted the results of the remaining three states of the Hindi heartland – Madhya Pradesh, Rajsthan and Chhattisgarh – with certain satisfaction. The Gujarat CM, who over the years has lived with the tag of being a poor campaigner outside his home state, finally managed to overcome the taboo and emerged as the party’s tried and tested star campaigner.
The major contributing factor in the rout of the Congress in these polls has been the huge public anger against the central government. A heavy price was paid for it by Congress governments of Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and Sheila Dikshit in Delhi. Gehlot did not mince words in putting the blame at the Manmohan Singh government at Centre, which has been riddled with cases of corruption justified with certain swagger by the likes of union minister Kapil Sibal.
It’s, however, to the credit of the Gujarat CM that he managed to convince his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and in Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh, and a high-profile party leader Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, to accept him as the star campaigner for the party in their respective fiefdoms. Before his elevation as the PM candidate, Modi was often compared with Chouhan for shouldering the responsibility. A victory in these polls would certainly remove the last vestige of doubt that anybody would be harbouring about the command and skippering of the party campaign during the 2014 general election.
AAP’s emergence has left Delhi assembly hung for the first time in its political history. BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Dr Harsh Vardhan has stated that he was not going to form the government if he did not have the numbers. The situation has arisen as the new political outfit indeed proved to be the X-factor (http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=45765) in crystallising people’s anger against price rise (http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=44724) and a complete non-response from government in handing the issues related to inflated
power bills. AAP not just energised the youth to vote for it but also made the poor and the schedule castes in the national Capital shift their generation-long loyalty from the Congress to the new outfit. The broom (AAP’s poll symbol) became the iconic tool to clean the Augean Stable.
The Congress vote share has come down by 15 per cent from 2008. The Sheila Dikshit government completely failed to read the writing on the wall. The BJP, thanks to the intervention of Narendra Modi at the last moment, managed to bring in a clean face in Dr Harsh Vardhan and stopped AAP from getting a complete walkover. Modi’s influence on the party campaign was very prominent in the Capital and all through the BJP campaign chief made it very clear that he associated closely with the ENT surgeon.
Besides Delhi, Modi must have noted the results of the remaining three states of the Hindi heartland – Madhya Pradesh, Rajsthan and Chhattisgarh – with certain satisfaction. The Gujarat CM, who over the years has lived with the tag of being a poor campaigner outside his home state, finally managed to overcome the taboo and emerged as the party’s tried and tested star campaigner.
The major contributing factor in the rout of the Congress in these polls has been the huge public anger against the central government. A heavy price was paid for it by Congress governments of Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and Sheila Dikshit in Delhi. Gehlot did not mince words in putting the blame at the Manmohan Singh government at Centre, which has been riddled with cases of corruption justified with certain swagger by the likes of union minister Kapil Sibal.
It’s, however, to the credit of the Gujarat CM that he managed to convince his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and in Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh, and a high-profile party leader Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, to accept him as the star campaigner for the party in their respective fiefdoms. Before his elevation as the PM candidate, Modi was often compared with Chouhan for shouldering the responsibility. A victory in these polls would certainly remove the last vestige of doubt that anybody would be harbouring about the command and skippering of the party campaign during the 2014 general election.
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