A harsh lesson for incumbents in the Assembly elections.
By Krishnakumar S.
NEW DELHI: The tally of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of 28, four short of the BJP in a House of 70 has resulted in a hung assembly in Delhi. With a fiercely fought triangular contest, and an unprecedented voter turnout, the margins of victory in many constituencies were less than a thousand. Even as the outcome throws up a lot of questions, the cleansing process initiated as well as the political churning which has happened in the city, gives a lot of hope.
The inroads made by the AAP have put the pollsters as well as the exit poll pundits at sea. None of their numbers could predict the tally of the AAP right. One had to accept at last the assertion of the AAP that there was silent wave in Delhi eagerly waiting for a change. The thin queues at the polling booths, highly symptomatic of the political apathy of the babus, business class as well as the common man alike gave way to a large and unprecedented turnout on election day, changing the story and ending up becoming a game changer.
But even in the run-up to the elections, it was business as usual for the Congress and the BJP. The sibling preference continued to rule the roost with respect to ticket distribution in political strongholds.
V K Malhotra, O P Babbar, Mahabal Misra, Sajjan Kumar— both from BJP and Congress had their constituencies inherited to their siblings, only to find them taste defeat at the hands of the political debutants of the AAP. The electorate did not favor any one of these shehzadas of the Congress or BJP, save late Sahib Singh Verma’s son.
So too, was the fate of the glamour boys and girls, whose claim to fame was their tenure as DUSU office bearers. From Ragini Nayak to Nakul Bharadwaj, most of them had to eat humble pie at the hustings, some even relegated to the third position. The undercurrents of the tectonic shifts in the political territory in the capital was too much for them to bear.
In the run-up to the elections, responding to the press queries that most of the candidates were too aam ( i.e. common), Kejriwal and his group was continually defending the same, arguing that the distance of the people from their leaders have to be reduced towards ushering in an era of political transparency and accessibility. It seems that the Delhi electorate has responded to these words literally.
Some of the political lightweights of the AAP went on to defeat the political heavyweights in the town who have been in the limelight for the last twenty years or more. Fifty-year representative and former Speaker Choudhary Prem Singh, whose claim to fame is his long uninterrupted victories at the hustings, with his name in the Guinness Book of Records for the same, was relegated to the third position in the Ambedkar Nagar constituency by Ashok Chauhan.
A first generation graduate from the Valmiki community, Rakhi Birla defeated three time minister Raj Kumar Chauhan in the Mangolpuri constituency. It was a great recognition of sorts when the former commando in the Army, Surender Singh, who fought in Kargill and became hearing impaired fighting the terrorist attack at Taj Bombay, won from the Cantonment area against four-time MLA of the BJP, Karan Singh Tanwar. It seems that these political representatives of the underdog are rewriting the political vocabulary of the Delhi politics.
Post-poll, as they smelled victory in three states – MP, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh – and was sure to be the largest party in Delhi, the BJP opened a media center with technological gadgets. Against this was the cost-effective arrangements at AAP headquarters. To hear the leaders of the AAP like Kumar Viswas announce leads and results from the balcony of the first floor of the party headquarters, as if it was a cricket commentary, to a jubilant, elated and electrified crowd who were waving brooms (the symbol of the party) high up into the air, was a totally different experience.
It is only hoped that this momentum of political churning and democratization is kept alive and would continue to offer hope to the city which has huge number of hapless immigrants who are inextricably linked to the urban patronage networks.
(Krishnakumar S teaches economics at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi.)
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