AAP no longer trendy among youth, DUSU poll debacle a wake up call for Kejriwal

By Tarique Anwar and Akshaya Mishra New Delhi: Not long ago, the Aam Aadmi Party was about the young and the impatient driven by that abstract, indefinable yet wonderful energy called idealism. What it espoused or fought for did not often stand up to logical scrutiny or practical common sense, yet it hardly bothered the faithful. They stood by it, convinced that the new beast in the political arena though imperfect had what it takes to change the nature of the political discourse as we know it. The results of the Delhi University Students Union reveal that this no more is the case. The trust of the youth in the Arvind Kejriwal-led party and its ideology, if it exists, is evaporating fast. [caption id=“attachment_2417942” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal. Naresh Sharma/Firstpost[/caption] For the AAP, still high on the 67-seat victory in the assembly election and still trapped in the delusion of invincibility, at least in Delhi, the DUSU election was an occasion for reality check. If it believed that students were still strongly behind it, the results come as a grim reminder that not everything is alright. Its Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), which had entered the elections with a bang promising to alter the ABVP-NSUI binary in the elections, suffered a serious loss of face after ABVP, the students’ wing of the BJP, scored an emphatic win in all four crucial DUSU posts - president, vice president, secretary and joint secretary. The margins give the full picture. ABVP’s Satender Awana, who was elected president, secured 20,439 votes, followed by Pradeep Vijay of the NSUI who managed 14,112 votes. Kuldeep Bhiduri of the CYSS secured only 8,375 votes. ABVP’s Sunny Deda secured 19,671 votes to grab the vice president’s post. In this case the CYSS came close losing by 757 votes. Anjali Rana and Charpal Yadav of the ABVP were elected as secretary and joint secretary by securing 14,944 and 16,243 votes respectively. The Congress-backed NSUI came second and CYSS third in both seats. While the ABVP has said that its victory is a mandate against money and muscle power, an oblique reference to the way the CYSS went about the elections, the latter has sought solace in the argument that 23 percent of votes in a debut election cannot be called poor performance. Whatever the case, the reality is the AAP-backed body had nothing to show for its efforts in the end. It had all its big shots, including Delhi Chief Minister and national convener Arvind Kejriwal, pitching in for the candidates. It also used its volunteer power amply to woo voters. The results of the DUSU elections do not change the contours of wider politics, but they certainly convey something is serious, particularly about Kejriwal’s party. It was the AAP which revived the relevance of the common man in the political narrative of the country – Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial aspirant then lent it scale and amplification to reap a massive nationwide mandate. In its anti-corruption crusader avatar, it exuded idealism and the energy of the new. It promised change and it had many takers among the youth. That idealism seemed to have evaporated into thin air the way CYSS, more than its well-backed rivals, came under spotlight for its electoral splurge. If everything stood constant, the CYSS should have won hands down in DUSU elections. Of course, there’s merit in its contention that ABVP has a strong cadre to fall back upon and as a new outfit it had no experience to bank on, but that does not tell the whole story. It would be acceptable if the parent outfit AAP had not spent a lot of energy in the elections and exposed itself fully. The party is free to reject it, but the fact is the youth are getting disenchanted with Kejriwal and AAP. In its seven-odd months in power, the idealism it stood for has been conspicuous by its absence. Kejriwal is no more the man he was perceived to be by students. His success was built on campus power, his decline may begin on campuses too. It should be introspection time for him.