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AAP infuses fresh air, new thinking in Indian electoral arena

The Bharatiya Janata Party may have won elections in three states but the story of the current round of Assembly polls is undoubtedly that of the stunning debut of Aam Admi Party (AAP).

The new kid on the block has shown that money, muscle and liquor power need not be the source of winning elections. Instead, honesty, integrity, transparency can win you polls. No, you don’t have to spend crores of rupees as most parties have been doing for long. AAP has shown that even with little money, one can win elections.

The AAP debut may have just altered the way the other traditional parties look at conducting their election campaigns. They need not give tickets to thugs, bootleggers, murder accused etc but to people who are chosen as AAP did — selecting those candidates approved by the electorate — as happened in Delhi.

The Union capital could be AAP’s home ground, the party may have cashed in on the Lokpal movement that the Anna Hazare-Arvind Kejriwal created two years ago, but the impact of the Delhi impressive show is surely going to be one of the key talking points of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

With many states witnessing multi-party contests in LS polls, any smaller outfit taking away even 3-4 per cent of votes will impact the results. AAP, if it contests in more number of states and draws even smaller percentage of votes, can damage the prospects of the favourites. That’s what Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena did to Shiv Sena-BJP in the last two elections or Chiranjeevi’s Prajarajyam did to Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh in 2009.

In Delhi, if the BJP has failed to reach the majority mark and Congress got reduced to an also ran, the credit goes to the fledgling party. From day one, it took calculated risk, right from deciding to float a political party to Kejriwal getting himself pitted against the formidable Sheila Dikshit, who was seeking election as chief minister fourth time.

 The door-to-door campaign, broom as a completely strange election symbol etc, whatever it did was new and caught the imagination of the people. Unlike the Anna movement, it did not concentrate its energy on middle class alone but took the party message to the slums too. Overall, it could win hearts and votes of a cross-section of people.

An embattled Congress has a lot to ponder from the current debacle. Unlike in the past, the grand old party needs to make necessary changes in its strategies. The ignominious defeat may have sent a message already as party vice president Rahul Gandhi has made right noises saying AAP’s win has made them “think politics in a way different from the traditional way the major parties have been doing.”

The change that he promised while taking over his new post in Jaipur last April was nowhere to be seen and at least now, the party cadres will look to him to infuse life in to the organisation, like giant killer Kejriwal did to an entire election process. The party has to examine its disconnect with voters – so strikingly felt in Rajasthan despite having an affable chief minister in Ashok Gehlot.

So much had been made of the populist schemes initiated by the Congress-led UPA at the Centre, including the food security, rural job scheme, right to education, ‘game changer’ Aadhar, but none could click for the party.

Undoubtedly, the current elections were a shot in the arm for the BJP which should give it a fresh momentum to face the Lok Sabha polls. Although its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi did campaign in all these states, win in all the three have been mainly credited to its chief ministers – Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh and chief ministerial candidate Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan.

The first two have also showed that it was just not Modi who can score a hat-trick, they too can, thus bringing down the aura around the Gujarat chief minister to some extent at least. The victory in these states is also credited to the BJP providing enough space to the three leaders to grow unlike the Congress where the complaint often heard is that the party does not allow local leaders to gain ground.

The BJP has won and Modi campaigned in his first election as its prime ministerial candidate. But was there a Modi wave? The debate has started raging, especially given the fact that the party struggled to reach the goal post in Chhatisgarh while it failed to reach the magic figure in Delhi despite Modi campaigning vigorously especially in the national capital.

For the BJP, challenge has just got bigger. The win in three states including impressive victories in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan (where it inflicted one of the most humiliating defeats on the Congress,) should boost its confidence for 2014. This round has offered it an ideal platform to build its campaign upon. However, it would be foolhardy to assume that what is true of the three states will be true of others next year.

For, any overconfident BJP leader should go back to history to see what happened in 2004. The BJP had won, like now, three of the four states with Delhi going the Congress way in 2003.

 The then prime minister,A B Vajpayee, supremely confident of winning LS polls, advanced them by six months, floated the ‘Shining India’ campaign, and went with all verve for the elections. The result was such as massive setback for the BJP that it has not recovered from the blow even to this day, 10 years later.

BJP sweeps Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh; single largest party in Delhi

In a strong performance ahead of the next year’s Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday unseated the Congress in Rajasthan, retained power in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and emerged as the single-largest party in Delhi.

The real winner in Delhi, however, was the nascent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which ended up as a strong number two, winning 28 of the 70 seats in the national capital’s Assembly to the BJP’s 31 seats. Though its ally Akali Dal won a seat, the BJP fell short of four seats required to have a simple majority of 36 seats in the 70-member Assembly.

But for the AAP’s challenge in the national capital, the BJP might have made a clean sweep of the four Assembly polls. The results, however, delivered a crushing blow to the Congress. The party lost very heavily in Rajasthan and virtually got decimated in the national capital, managing to win just eight seats. Three-time Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit herself lost her New Delhi seat to AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal by a huge margin of 25,864 votes.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress could not stop the ruling BJP from significantly improving its tally in the 230-member state Assembly – its tally dropped from 71 in the current Assembly to 58 in the current election. The BJP will have a two-thirds majority in the new Assembly.
 
In Chhattisgarh, the party gave a tough fight to the ruling BJP, but it could not stop Chief Minister Raman Singh from registering a hat trick of victories. While the Congress strength in the new Assembly goes up from 38 in the outgoing Assembly to 39 seats, the BJP lost just one seat – its strength in the new Assembly will be 49 as against 50 seats in the outgoing Assembly.

In Rajasthan, where the Congress, under Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, suffered an unprecedented defeat, the rival BJP stormed back to power with a three-fourths majority. The party won 162 of the 199 seats where elections were held, 84 seats more than its strength in the outgoing Assembly. The Congress, whose tally fell by 74 seats, will have a poor presence in the new Assembly with just 21 members.

Though Gehlot won his Sardarpura seat in his home district of Jodhpur, his party suffered defeats in the remaining nine seats of the district at the hands of the BJP.

With the spectacular victory, BJP leader Vasundhara Raje is set to return as chief minister after a gap of five years during which she had to fight an internal challenge within the BJP.
 
A disappointed Congress president Sonia Gandhi conceded the defeats and told reporters: “Obviously people are unhappy, otherwise they would not have given such results. We are very disappointed with the results and need to do deep introspection.” Her son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi too acknowledged that “the people have given us a message which has reached not only our mind but also our heart”.

The Congress, however, was not willing to see the results as a trendsetter for the ensuing Lok Sabha polls next year. BJP president Rajnath Singh told reporters that the party will form government in Delhi, despite the fact that it is still falling short of at least three seats to make it to the mark of 36.

However, later in the evening, BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan said he was preparing to sit in the opposition and see how he could work for people who helped the party emerge as the single largest party which fell short by four seats from reaching the half-way mark in the Assembly. “The BJP got the affection of people because of popularity of its chief ministerial candidates and our prime ministerial candidate (Modi),” Rajnath Singh said after a meeting of their parliamentary board.  In his reaction, Kejriwal said, the AAP will play the role of a constructive opposition and will not seek support from any party to form the govt.

Narendra Modi took a dig at the Congress in his tweet. “The total number of seats Congress has won in all the four states today cannot even match the seats @BJP4India won in one state!," Modi stated.

Delhi became the “youngest” of the four assemblies, with most of its MLAs belonging to an estimated average age of about 43 years. Madhya Pradesh followed with the average age of its MLAs standing at 47 whereas the average age of legislators stood at 48 in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

’Nota’ finds many takers in Chhattisgarh and a few in Delhi

A substantial number of voters in the Maoist-infested Bastar region in Chhattisgarh pressed the newly introduced “None-of-the-Above” (Nota) buttons on the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), whereas not many opted for it in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

While 3.07 per cent of those who cast votes in Chhattisgarh opted for the Nota, only 0.63 per cent did so in Delhi, where the Aam Aadmi Party came up as an alternative choice for the people unhappy with the established political parties like the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). About 1.92 per cent voters in Rajasthan pressed the new button on the EVMs, while 1.9 per cent did so in Madhya Pradesh.

Complying with the September 27 Supreme Court order, the Election Commission, for the first time, introduced the Nota buttons on the EVMs used in the recent polls for the four states and the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

As anticipated by a section within the security establishment of the government, the new option found maximum takers in Chhattisgarh, particularly in the 12 constituencies in Bastar, a hotbed of ultra-leftist insurgency.

As many as 10,848 voters in Chitrakoot constituency of Bastar district rejected all the six candidates in the fray, while 9,677 did so in Dantewada. Altogether, 8,381 pressed the Nota buttons in Keshkal, with 7,179 in Bijapur and 6,731 in Narainpur.
 
Security officials in New Delhi were apprehensive of the possibility of the Maoist influence in Bastar and other red bastions of Chhattisgarh, resulting in high percentage of Nota votes.

Maoist insurgents have been calling for boycott of all elections in their strongholds and they did the same in the recent polls too.

The Nota found takers in all the 199 constituencies that went to polls in Rajasthan, with the number Nota votes ranging from 349 to 7,244. The newly-introduced option found maximum takers in 20 constituencies, including 16 reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. 

Altogether, 2,337 voters pressed the Nota buttons in Bhopal North constituency, where some social organisations encouraged the victims of the 1984 gas tragedy to use the option to give vent to their anger over inadequate compensation given to them.

In Delhi, however, the Nota found only a few takers, with just 49,892 opting for it and the number of total valid votes being 78,74,115. Altogether 6,43,144 opted for Nota in Madhya Pradesh, with the total number of valid votes being 33849550.
The Election Commission, however, on Saturday clarified that the votes polled by pressing the Nota buttons on the EVMs would not be considered valid and would not be taken into account to determine the candidates who would forfeit their security deposits.

The poll-panel had earlier clarified that even if the number of electors opting for the Nota option in a poll was more than the number of votes polled by any of the candidates, the one getting the largest number of votes would be declared winner.

Hung House makes BJP consider sitting in opposition

The BJP on Sunday reached teasingly close to the half-way mark in the 70 member Assembly as it prepared to sit in the opposition with 32 seats and not approach the main rival Aam Aadmi Party for support in the hung House.

There is a strong possibility of a repoll, preceded by the President’s rule, if the BJP – the single largest party – decides not to take the next step towards government formation due to absence of a clear majority.

Lt Governor Najeeb Jung has already taken note of the hung Assembly and said he would still follow the convention of inviting the single largest party to form the government in the coming days.

As the BJP and the AAP – with 28 seats - have refused to support each other in the Assembly and the Congress – with eight seats - too appears in no position to play any role in the government formation, the possibility of a fresh Assembly election appears imminent.

There is one independent and one legislator from the Janata Dal  (United) in the new House. The existing Assembly’s tenure ends December 17 and the fresh elections, if needed, will have to be held within the next six months, close to the Lok Sabha elections in May 2014.

After the BJP’s tally fell below the expectations of a comfortable majority, the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan said he was preparing to sit in the opposition. “We may not approach anyone to cobble a coalition to reach the half way mark of 36,” he said, underlining the party’s aversion to any form of “horse trading”.

“We under-estimated the presence of the AAP and the type of support it was enjoying,” said Harsh Vardhan who himself won from the Krishna Nagar constituency with a margin of 43,150 votes.

He said voters got attracted to the AAP as usually there is a craze for trying out a new thing.

Asked about the lessons for the BJP from the AAP show, he said: “I do not think that we have to learn any organisational lessons from the AAP as we are organisationally much stronger than the AAP.”

The BJP lost two per cent vote share in these elections as compared to the last Assembly polls. The AAP’s dream debut saw it walking away with 30 percent vote share. The Congress lost 15 per cent vote share and others’ vote share dipped by 12 per cent.

The BJP ended the counting day by sharing the honours with debutant AAP for ending the 15-year rule of the Congress whose Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit herself lost by 25,864 seats to AAP’s leader Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi seat.

Arvind Kejriwal: The man with a broom

Giant-killer Arvind Kejriwal, who defeated three-time Chief Minister and Congress stalwart Sheila Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency, is nothing short of a political sensation, and his personal victory can be compared to the maverick Raj Narain’s electoral win over prime minister Indira Gandhi in the historic 1977 general election.

The bespectacled Kejriwal, 45, an IIT engineer by training and a revenue officer by profession, was not only able to effectively present his one-year-old political party as an alternative to the two big national parties who have ruled the national capital in the past but, with a modest and affable personality that identified very much with the common man, fired the imagination of the youth and the marginalised who came out in large numbers to vote for his party.

Kejriwal, who came into the limelight as one of the main spokesmen and a close lieutenant of anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare during his highly publicised movement in 2011, later parted ways with his mentor to start a political outfit - much against Hazare’s wishes who wanted to keep his movement non-political - in November last year.

Dismissed by the BJP and the Congress as political upstarts who would not be able to match their popularity or influence, the unheralded AAP was able to catch popular imagination by offering transparency in governance and people-friendly policies to the city residents hit hard by price rise, corruption and insensitive bureaucracy.

Kejriwal, who has studied at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, created a sizeable fan following in the slums and working class areas of Delhi while also attracting youths and the middle class by protesting agains power hikes last year.

The youth and sections of the middle class saw him as a "hero" who had "unmasked" corrupt politicians and sported their AAP emblazoned white side caps (akin to the Gandhi cap) with aplomb.

"His credibility peaked when he fasted for the Jan Lokpal bill (against corruption)," close friend Pankaj Gupta told IANS.

Eager to sound neutral before he plunged into politics, Kejriwal spared no one. He levelled charges against Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and then Law Minister Salman Khurshid of illegal land deals and fund embezzlement.

He also targeted then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Nitin Gadkari, accusing him of grabbing farmers’ land and corruption in collusion with the Nationalist Congress Party’s tainted Ajit Pawar.

His ideas and promises appeared to have convinced people to give the rank outsiders a chance over established parties.

"I voted for jharu (broom) this time," said housemaid Reena Mandal, who had all along been voting for the Congress. "We thought of giving them a chance, especially since our children said their friends would be all voting for AAP."

The 24X7 media, sensing his growing popularity and unconventional appeal, too played an important role in making him a household name and taking the message of this somewhat idealistic politician to the masses.

His colleagues describe him as a simple man.

"He takes along everybody. He thinks logically," said senior party member Gopal Rai. "His dedication and thinking influences his supporters," said friend Gupta.

Very few people still know about his origins and his rise.

Kejriwal was previously in the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) before he quit the government to take up activism full time to campaign for the Right to Information issue which finally became a law. He also worked in Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity for some time where he came in contact with the "poorest of the poor".

One reason for his success is his total identification in dress, manners, style of living and a sense of personal sacrifice to the ordinary people.

His next moves will be keenly watched as he has let it be known that he wants to blaze a new trail in politics and pitch his AAP as an alternative to the "misgovernance" of the mainstream and established parties.

He is a movie buff but now finds little time due to his political engrossment. He practices yoga and meditates regularly, said another aide.

A strict vegetarian, he prefers simple homemade food and reads a wide variety of books. Kejriwal’s wife Sunita is an Indian Revenue Service officer. They have two children.

Sonia, Rahul magic worked in Chattisgarh; Modi flops

The Congress did put up a tough fight in Chhattisgarh with candidates winning seats where party President Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, addressed election rallies.

The party’s strike rate was stupendous when it comes to winning seats where star campaigners addressed public meetings as its candidates won seven seats where the Gandhis drew crowds, but still fell short of seats to form the government.

BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi criss-crossed the state but was not entirely successful in turning the tide in favour of party candidates.

The BJP won Rajnandgaon, Jagdalpur and Raigarh seats where Modi had addressed public meetings. However, the credit for Rajnandgaon should go to Chief Minister Raman Singh, who has been winning the seat for the past three Assembly elections.
BJP candidate Roshan Lal won the Raigarh seat while Santosh Bafna emerged victorious in Jagdalpur, which falls in the Bastar region where Modi had addressed a rally. Rahul Gandhi addressed a rally in Jagdalpur but could not woo people to vote for party candidate Shamu Kashyap.

Modi’s star power was found wanting in the Bastar seat which was won by Lakeshwar Baghel of the Congress who defeated BJP’s Subhaoo Kashyap by a margin of 19,168 votes.

Rahul’s rallies proved lucky for Congress candidates Umesh Patel and Shanker Dhruwa who won from Kharsia and Kanker respectively. Patel is the son of late Pradesh Congress Committee chief Nandkumar Patel, who was killed in a Maoist attack in May which had wiped out the Congress leadership in the state.

Similarly, Sonia Gandhi addressed rallies in Kondagaon, Bhilai, Ambikapur and Kota. Congress candidates emerged victorious in three seats barring Bhilai which went to the BJP’s kitty.

Congress candidates Mohan Makram, T S Baba and Renu Jogi won from Kondagaon, Ambikapur and Kota respectively. Jogi is the wife of former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi. Incidentally, Jogi’s son, Amit, won from Marwahi which is adjoining Kota.

Modi addressed rallies in Korba and Bilha, which went to Congress candidates Jai Singh Agarwal and Siyaram Kaushik respectively.

Similarly, in Mahasmund, Modi had little effect as BJP rebel Vimal Chopra emerged victorious.

Sonia Gandhi addressed three rallies in Rajasthan – Sikar, Dungarpur and Pachpadra —but the Congress was decimated in the state with just 21 seats. Rahul also addressed a number of rallies in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi where he failed to make any significant impact.

Raman Singh: From healer to three-time Chhattisgarh CM

The odds were stacked against him. But Ayurvedic doctor-turned-politician Raman Singh, known as "Mr Clean" in Chhattisgarh, proved his worth to pull off a hat-trick for the BJP -- single-handedly.

The 61-year-old Singh, who launched his political career in 1983 as a councillor in his home town Kawardha, has never looked back since December 2003 when he led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power.

In 2003, he delivered a stunning defeat to the Ajit Jogi-led Congress government in the first ever election in the state which was carved out of Madhya Pradesh three years previously.

Raman Singh, admirers say, is a sober and accessible politician who has ruled the hearts and minds of many in Chhattisgarh, a state of 2.55 crore people with a fifth of India’s estimated coal and iron ore reserves but steeped in poverty.

In a rarity for a politician, that too after a decade in office, Raman Singh has only a handful of hardcore critics in the state.

Ahead of this election, he overcame a rare show of unity displayed by the otherwise perennially warring Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh.

"It was only Raman Singh’s image, his popularity and easy acceptability among the people that helped the BJP to register a third successive victory," Subhash Rao, one of his key aides, told IANS.

Rao, who travelled with Raman Singh during his 6,000-km plus ’Vikas Yatra’ covering all 90 constituencies, said: "He is a large-hearted man. He hates cheap politics."

A father of a son and daughter (the son assists him in politics), Raman Singh is widely seen as a workaholic.

Even Congress politicians have a sneaking admiration for Raman Singh.

A senior Congress leader and a former minister told IANS: "He is a big asset for the BJP. Voters rooted for him although Maoists wiped out almost the entire Congress leadership, a classic case of security failure."
Raman Singh, however, did not always have it easy.

Many had thought in 2003 that Raman Singh lacked popular base and had become chief minister only due to luck.

Having been elected in 1990 for the first time as a legislator in undivided Madhya Pradesh, Raman Singh was a minister of state in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government when he was moved to Raipur.

One of his biggest success was unveiling a food security act in 2008 that ensured basic food to 60 percent of the population. It also helped the BJP to expand its base to rural areas.

Raman Singh was also a votary of infrastructure and industralization. He blunted criticism over his failure to check the Maoists by saying that the rebels were a national problem, not Chhattisgarh’s headache alone.

The man proved pundits wrong with successive election victories although the BJP in Chhattisgarh is dominated by arrogant ministers and legislators -- casting doubts on the party’s electoral prospects.

To add to his woes, a BJP star in the state, Dilip Singh Judeo, was caught on camera accepting bribe at a hotel in the national capital.

No wonder, all rival groups in the Congress came together at the call of party vice president Rahul Gandhi to oust the BJP.

But even the unity of Ajit Jogi, Charandas Mahant, Motilal Vora and Ravindra Choubey -- the ’dadas’ of the Congress in Chhattisgarh -- failed to derail a silent pro-Raman Singh wave.
Did Narendra Modi’s campaign help Raman Singh?

Raman Singh’s supporters say Modi could have contributed to the BJP win but the main credit must go to the chief minister. "Yes, Modi was a bonus. But Raman Singh is the reason why BJP won," said a long-time loyalist.