That was the chant of the common man pre-elections and that will reverberate in the air for the next five years in Delhi, as the unassuming Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP swept the Delhi Assembly elections with a massive mandate winning 67 of the 70 seats, decimating BJP to reconcile with only three and sweeping out the Congress without opening their account.
Kejriwal, a shrewd strategist that he is and a good orator stole the hearts of Delhiites with his down to earth convincing skills. The swearing in ceremony that is fixed on 14 February will give him a free scope to govern without any impediments. Kejriwal’s plea to give him just one more clear chance to rule over Delhi, influencing the masses that he could not deliver for lack of clear mandate, was good enough, as people felt that a fractured mandate again would spell doom for them and they wholeheartedly decided to give him another chance.
We are sure that he will grab the opportunity to deliver and strengthen his party steadily on a national level. Delhi has pressing demands and first and foremost the law and order situation should be set right, beginning with providing safety for womenfolk, for people want Delhi to be just the national capital and not the rape capital.
Whereas there is absolutely no dispute about Kejriwal’s popularity on the masses it is wrong to say that BJP and the Prime Minister Modi have been swept away by the AAP tsunami. On a minute analysis we will realize that the vote share of BJP from the 2013 Assembly elections is lowered by barely 1 per cent, justifying that its vote base is almost stable.
The main concern is for the Congress, not because it failed to capture a single seat but since its vote share dwindled by almost 15 per cent compared to the last Assembly elections. Likewise the resolve of the masses to have a stable government, resulted in wiping out all the other contestants and their vote share also went down by a massive 9 per cent. With the Congress being driven from irrelevance to near relegation since the parliamentary elections and consequently the minorities left with no option, particularly with the negativity for BJP, bred in them by their religious leaders, the votes were translated to AAP and that caused the quantum boost for it.
But that is good for democracy! Almost in every Assembly elections, the BJP was winning effortlessly, even in a Muslim dominated Jammu and Kashmir, indicating that it was steadily boiling down to one-party dominance. The drift in Delhi is a welcome move and should be an eye-opener to all to ponder over.
