How Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is prepping for 2019
Bitter rivals Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress are reportedly in talks to explore the possibility of an electoral alliance for the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital.
In 2014, the BJP had won all seven seats from Delhi — with both the AAP and the Congress drawing a blank.
However, amid this crucial effort to bury its hatchet with the Congress, AAP was hit by another controversy recently, with party MLA Alka Lamba reportedly being asked to quit following her stance on the adoption in the Delhi Assembly of a resolution allegedly to revoke the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's Bharat Ratna in view of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Lamba claimed she spoke to AAP supremo and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal who, she said, asked her to resign as MLA.
A day later, the AAP leadership claimed it had made no mention to revoke Rajiv Gandhi’s Bharat Ratna. The party also denied that any MLA was asked to resign.
All through this controversy, the one leader who remained conspicuous by his silence was the once 'verbose’ chief minister of Delhi — Arvind Kejriwal.
Having courted several controversies and libel litigations worth several crores, Kejriwal now appears to have silently gone backstage, leaving his deputy Manish Sisodia to do the talking and firefighting where need be.
Kejriwal, over the past year or so, has refrained from making direct attacks on individuals, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who used to be the Delhi CM’s favourite punching bag — one he even took on directly in Varanasi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Not just in speeches, Kejriwal has studiously avoided making personal attacks through Twitter too.
A Hindustan Times analysis of the AAP chief's tweets shows he mentioned ‘Modi’ in 255 of his 1,303 posts between May 2016 and February 2017. But from February 2017 onwards, Kejriwal started avoiding mentioning Modi by name.
So, how is the Delhi chief minister playing his politics now?
Kejriwal is focusing on highlighting the civic and community work done by his government in Delhi. He is using both social media and public speeches to talk about his policy initiatives and broader regional politics.
दिल्ली के लोगों को बधाई... https://t.co/m3PvOlF7EU
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 31, 2018
Having failed to make a significant difference electorally from Goa to Gujarat, the AAP leader seems to have realised that he needs to consolidate his base in the national capital to realise his dream of making AAP a national party. While AAP is recognised as a state party in Punjab too, Kejriwal is focused on Delhi — because it was Delhi that catapulted him to the chief minister’s chair.
In July this year, AAP started make efforts to revive its core voter base in Delhi — auto drivers. The party has reportedly appointed auto drivers as ‘in-charge’ in each of the 70 Assembly constituencies in Delhi. Albeit slightly late, after his trysts with various vote bases across the country, Kejriwal seems to have realised, “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.”
And, in a time of fiery political rhetoric and constantly clashing bombast too, his strategy of relative silence is making him look different again.