Aam Aadmi Party looks to drum up support sans Arvind Kejriwal on ground

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will hold a public meeting on Sunday at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground, the first big gathering of its workers and supporters after the arrest of its only mass leader, the party’s national convener, Delhi Chief Minister (CM) Arvind Kejriwal.

It will be the first big test of whether the party’s second-rung leadership has the sway to galvanise its rank and file.

Since Kejriwal's arrest on Thursday, the AAP leadership has felt the need to underscore that its legitimacy to run the party continues to come from Kejriwal. It has stressed that Kejriwal would continue to run the party and the Delhi government from behind bars. It also fielded his wife, Sunita Kejriwal, to record a message from the seat where he sits.

Addressing party workers on Sunday, AAP strategist Sandeep Pathak said the party will function as it did before.

“Earlier, instructions came from Civil Lines (Delhi CM’s official residence), and now he will direct us from jail, and we will follow his orders,” Pathak said. “Kejriwal’s first order is that we hold a big rally at Ramlila Maidan on March 31,” he added.

Pathak urged party leaders, legislators, and councillors to ensure that at least 10 people from each of Delhi’s 13,800 polling booths reach Ramlila Ground on Sunday; that is, nearly 150,000 people should gather at a venue that has witnessed several iconic movements since the party’s founding in 2012.

The challenge before AAP is to sustain its campaign without its talismanic leader and around his incarceration for two months. The two states where it has governments, Delhi and Punjab, will vote in the last two phases of the 2024 Lok Sabha (LS) polls.

Delhi will vote on May 25 and Punjab on June 1. AAP cannot rely on its ally, one-time rival, the Congress party.

AAP and Congress have a seat-sharing agreement in Delhi. However, according to sources close to Delhi Congress leaders, such as Sandeep Dikshit and Arvinder Singh Lovely, the two received flak from party supporters for expressing solidarity with Kejriwal after his arrest.

Other Congress leaders, such as Congress’ Punjab LS Member of Parliament Ravneet Singh Bittu, called Kejriwal a “liar”.

“We oppose the manner of Kejriwal’s arrest, a sitting CM. But expect AAP to tell us where it stands now on its allegations against the late Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit,” said a Congress leader.

AAP’s vote share in Delhi comprises mainly people who earlier voted for the Congress but also those who prefer the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the LS but the Kejriwal-led AAP for governing Delhi, as the Lokniti-CSDS post-poll surveys in the 2019 LS and 2020 Delhi Assembly polls showed.

In the February 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, the AAP vote share surged to 53.57 per cent from 18.11 per cent, which it polled 10 months earlier in the May 2019 LS polls.

The BJP vote share dropped from 56.86 per cent in the 2019 LS polls to 38.5 per cent in February 2020. The Congress, which received 22.5 per cent of the vote in the LS polls, plummeted to 4.26 per cent in the Assembly polls. However, two years later, in the civic elections in December 2022, the AAP vote share decreased to 42 per cent. BJP’s remained at 39 per cent, but that of the Congress increased to 11.68 per cent as minorities gravitated towards the party in the aftermath of the communal riots in Northeast Delhi.

Pathak told party workers on Sunday that Kejriwal’s arrest came as a godsend since those who voted for the BJP in the LS polls in Delhi were now inclined towards voting for AAP after Kejriwal’s arrest. There are also those in Congress who believe their party would be the primary beneficiary of AAP’s implosion, as happened with the minorities deserting the AAP in several of Delhi’s seats in the December 2022 civic elections.

As AAP leaders Atishi and others have pointed out, Kejriwal is not an individual but an ideology. They believe that Kejriwal continues to represent good governance, a symbol across the country of providing affordable electricity and water supply, health, and education, which will again appeal to the people of Delhi in the 2025 Assembly polls.

According to a Trinamool Congress leader, Kejriwal’s arrest helped bury their recent differences with the Congress and unite the INDIA (Indian National Inclusive Developmental Alliance) bloc around the issue of “authoritarianism” and the arrest of Opposition leaders, such as Hemant Soren and Kejriwal.

As an AAP strategist explained, the paradox is that India Against Corruption emerged with some backing from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

“Several of our early supporters had taken to calling us the BJP’s B-team. But with Kejriwal’s arrest, we have shown that we are fighting the BJP tooth and nail on the ground, and we expect all opponents of the BJP would support us in this cause,” he said.