Make no mistake about it. The BJP's win in the Delhi municipal corporation election is not half as significant as the crushing defeat of the Aam Aadmi Party. BJP retaining control of the civic bodies for a successive third term on the shoulders of its popular mascot Narendra Modi may, in fact, suggest that performance and electoral outcomes are unrelated. Hopefully, this time round the party would give a better account of itself in administering the capital city of India.
However, the voters in Delhi were more forthright in sending out a stern message to Arvind Kejriwal. If disregarding the anti-incumbency against the BJP they still chose to rebuff the AAP it was only to warn Kejriwal that his politics of shoot and scoot, of name-calling and endless confrontation was not okay.
He will have to change or else be prepared to be cast aside when the voters next get a chance. Forty-eight seats out of a total 270 for a party which had swept the Assembly polls a mere two years ago winning 67 of the 70 seats is an outright rejection of the Kejriwal brand of street-brawl politics.
Voters are not impressed by reckless and irresponsible politics which is the calling card of Kerjiwal. It may be that he had all along been a maverick, having skimmed dangerously close to insubordination during his time as a government servant. However, being a mid-level babu, his errant conduct essentially concerned his superiors alone. Not so Kejriwal the politician, though. Now a greater responsibility vests in him.
Having exploited the anti-corruption platform of Anna Hazare for personal glorification, the newly-launched AAP soon became Kejriwal’s proprietorial vehicle for boosting his political career, with anyone claiming to be equal contemptuously thrown out. Overnight success in Delhi went to his head. He now entertained prime ministerial ambitions. Misusing the financial and administrative clout of the Delhi Government, Kejriwal set out to conquer more and more States.
The voters in Goa and Punjab however had other ideas. They gave a thumbs-down to an upstart who had nothing to show by way of achievement bar his faux pretensions of honesty. The rejection should have ordinarily led to immediate course correction. But the megalomaniac Kerjiwal was beyond redemption.
If the Modi Government was supposedly to blame for his own failure in Delhi, the electoral reverses in Punjab and Goa were the handiwork of an Election Commission which was apparently in bed with the BJP. Instead of holding mirror to his own rotten self, he abused the Election Commissioners by name. Undermining a constitutional body was a ploy to hide his own flawed mental makeup. The voters saw through the game and rebuffed the false messiah.
Indeed, AAP had conquered Delhi only to deceive it. The overnight rise and an equally quick decline of AAP is directly linked to Kejriwal’s stricken personality. He suffers from delusions of grandeur. He most generously distributed largesse to keep the herd sufficiently deferential. One of the first acts of the Kejriwal Government was to recommend a four-fold increase in the salary and perks of Delhi MLAs.
Treating the government a gravy train, he gave jobs to numerous sycophants and even family members, often short-circuiting rules and established procedures. His own relatives, including a brother-in-law were found dipping in the public till, demolishing the much-touted claim of him being personally honest.
Contrary to claims about `simple living and high thinking,’ Kejriwal occupied a spacious bungalow while his Ministers, equally comfortably housed, devised ways to go on foreign jaunts on the flimsiest of excuses. The PR spiel was that Kejriwal wouldn’t have air-conditioners at his residence. Yet, the monthly power bill was in excess of Rs 1 lakh. Indeed, for someone half of whose Ministers had to be sacked on account of corruption and/or criminality to claim that AAP was clean was a sick joke.
As for performance, from the word go the Kejriwal Government with malice aforethought stepped on the toes of every other authority. He thought he could bamboozle his way to become the all-powerful lord and master of Delhi. Regardless of the clearly defined powers of the Union Government and various other agencies, he embarked on a collision course until the courts called his bluff. On the ground, aside from minor improvements in the education and health sectors, there was nothing to show for all the bluster and bluff the loudspeakers of AAP had indulged in these past two years.
In short, the BJP took the sting out of anti-incumbency by replacing en bloc the outgoing city elders but Kejriwal could not do so because he alone personified AAP. The voters who had so overwhelmingly reposed trust in the false messiah wanted to teach him a lesson for letting them down.
The AAP's drubbing was well-deserved. It may have effectively put paid to Kejriwal’s oversized national ambitions. Indeed, holding on to Delhi might become difficult when soon 21 AAP MLAs are disqualified for the breach of office- of- profit clause while quite a few others might see percentage in jumping a sinking ship.
(The writer is a senior columnist)
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