Battle for Delhi: Kejriwal Followed Naveen’s Strategy!

New Delhi: Arvind Kejriwal once again came out as victorious repeating almost the 2015 show faltering the Bharatiya Janata Party. The post-mortem of the poll results is being done by political parties, analysts and psephologists. One may say it as defeat of the BJP and other may highlight the Congress factor for AAP win. But one factor to which even Kejriwal’s critics may also agree that it is his developmental works that drove him safe, the same strategy being adopted by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, a simple strategy which catapulted him to power for straight 5th term.

Many say the politics of hate has been temporarily defeated in Delhi and this sends a positive message across the country. The Delhi assembly elections have been the most venomous and vulgar and the BJP has carefully made it its strategy. Lakshman Rekhas were crossed by the BJP without any shame and inhibition just to win an election.

What has been proved beyond doubt is that Arvind Kejriwal is the king of Delhi politics and his policies find place in the heart of the Delhi people.

If anyone is to be blamed for the massive defeat of the BJP, it should be its politics crafted by Modi-Shah’s unshakable Jodi.

The hateful content of the BJP campaign is another reason to believe that the party knew that it was staring at a humiliating defeat and since it did not have a counter-strategy to neutralise AAP’s lead, it resorted to communal and hateful rhetoric for Hindu vote consolidation.

The BJP had fielded the entire brigade of nationalists for a contest over 70 assembly seats. During the campaigning, the party’s former president and home minister Amit Shah used all his might. Like a common party worker, he went door to door, addressed all small and big gatherings in support of the party’s candidates and tried to convey his message through rallies. But all went in vain and people have rejected the hate politics and Amit Shah.

Though, the BJP had made Prime Minister Narendra Modi its face for this election, he addressed only two public rallies. The message was clear- if the result is not favourable, then ‘brand Modi’ should not be dented.

The BJP fought the elections on national issues like the CAA-NRC, Article 370 and Triple Talaq, while attacking the gathering of anti-CAA protesters at Shaheen Bagh and even calling Kejriwal a terrorist, and tried to polarise the Hindu vote around the issue.

On the other hand, following the path of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Kejriwal joined the fight with a long list of work done by his government on issues related to the common man such as education, electricity, water and health.

The AAP shifted its campaign to focus on the development agenda and diligently avoided getting dragged into the divisive debate on anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh. It went to the polls with the performance of the Kejriwal-led government or Kaam ki Rajniti, Kejriwal tried to project himself as the national alternative through positive campaigning. Instead of attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kejriwal focused on his own government’s achievements.

As votes are counted, it appears that the AAP’s efforts to “localise” the Delhi election with development agenda has succeeded while the BJP’s bid to “nationalise” and “polarise” the election has failed measurably.