Kejriwal’s AAP loses Delhi in assembly elections

Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), have stunningly lost the Delhi assembly election in a major turnaround for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is now poised to govern the Indian capital again after 27 years, Al Jazeera reports.

Twelve years since its sensational ride to power in the 1993 assembly elections on the back of a popular anticorruption movement, it was clear Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, his deputy, had lost their constituencies well before vote counting had finished on Saturday.

The AAP temporarily locked down its party headquarters in Lutyens’ Delhi on Saturday afternoon as celebrations broke out at the nearby BJP offices, adorned in the party colour of saffron, with party workers dancing and distributing sweets. “Development wins, good governance triumphs,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X.

In the 70-seat assembly in Delhi, the BJP had crossed the majority mark of 35 seats by Saturday afternoon, winning more than 48 seats by the afternoon. The AAP tally went from the 63 seats it won in the 2020 election to 22 seats as counting was still continuing in the afternoon.

“What once started as a people’s movement had now fizzled into a mere political party,” said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research (CPR), referring to the AAP. “Kejriwal is perhaps just a politician now and once that shine wears off, the core voters’ affiliation is weakened.”

Delhi, where more than 33 million people live and the national capital city, New Delhi, is located, is the centre of political power in India – and one that until now has remained out of the grip of the BJP despite its meteoric political rise under Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2014.

“Delhi is a mini India, it has a substantial population from various regions of the country – and the BJP has shown that if they can win Delhi, they can win anything,” Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera. “This turnaround is significant because this victory is a story of BJP’s micromanagement in constituencies. And tells us that they are unmatched.”

With Kejriwal out of the upcoming assembly, the tables have turned in Delhi politics, experts said. This is unchartered territory.

For more than 10 years, the BJP has maintained complete control over the country’s parliament, located in New Delhi, but always remained at a distance from state powers. “The BJP now has the same kind of centralisation that Modi has been peddling, the so-called ‘double engine’ campaign,” said Sircar.

But the saffron party needs to be cautious, he warned, as Delhi has changed since the BJP last won the assembly election in 1993. Sircar said: “The BJP has not governed Delhi that looks like this or feels like this – a modern cosmopolitan imagination.”