AAP ki Pasand: What MCD poll win means for Delhi and Arvind Kejriwal’s national ambitions

The Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will surely boost the Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit’s profile and further its national ambitions.

The AAP broke the BJP’s 15-year stronghold by bagging 134 of 250 wards in the civic polls.

The saffron party, meanwhile, prevailed in 104 wards, the Congress won just nine and Independents three.

The AAP prevailed in Delhi after  highly-charged campaigning by AAP and BJP which saw top leaders, including Union ministers, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and MPs hit the streets for door-to-door campaigning and meetings to garner public support.

Let’s take a closer look at what it means for Delhi as well as the party’s national ambitions:

What does this mean for AAP in Delhi?

Speaking to News9, senior journalists Ajay Jha and Neerja Chowdhury called the MCD win “significant for AAP as a growing force, more than it being a setback for the BJP.”

“The AAP in MCD is even more significant than it winning the Himachal Pradesh Assembly because this will allow the party to show delivery at the ground level much more effectively. People were fed up with corruption among other issues in MCD during BJP’s 15 years tenure. It’s time for AAP to walk the talk now," they said.

Some, like AAP MLA Som Dutt, are optimistic that the outcome will make it easier to govern the National Capital.

Dutt, speaking to The Print, said, “The civic body is one department that is most connected with the public. Earlier, there used to be a lot of tussles between the MCD and the MLAs from the same area if they were from different parties. An MLA had to get an NOC from the councillor if they were doing some work, and the public would suffer. The work will get smoother. The BJP would create a lot of hurdles for us to work. This will help us further strengthen the party in Delhi and earn the goodwill of the citizens.”

NDTV noted that the AAP’s victory allows it more controls including large swathes of roads, streetlights, and primary schools. The piece added that Kejriwal can thus firm up his “Delhi model of governance” in the anticipation of larger battles.

“But this can mean more bad blood between the AAP and the BJP-ruled Centre, which continues to control land, police and some other key matters in Delhi through the Lieutenant Governor,” the piece noted.

Others favoured the less optimistic assessment.

Niranjan Sahoo, senior fellow with the Observer Research Foundation’s (ORF) Governance and Politics Initiative, said, “The foremost challenge in front of the AAP is to attain the kind of autonomy it needs to operate. While AAP has won 134 seats, many of the tasks and activities that come under MCD are still under various government bodies and ministries — like housing and urban development and the Delhi Development Authority — that are under the Centre. There has been a constant fight between the BJP ruled-MCD and AAP, and now it will enter a new dimension.”

“The Centre’s response has been hostile towards the AAP government and it may try to create roadblocks if the MCD is under AAP,” Sahoo added.

What does this mean for the AAP’s national ambitions?

NDTV noted that this victory heralds the first time the AAP has defeated the BJP in any election.

The news outlet noted that the AAP’s pitch “Kejriwal’s government, Kejriwal’s corporator” was on strikingly similar lines to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘double engine’ slogan.

That this comes in the backdrop of impending Assembly polls results in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh – the BJP is expected to prevail in the former, while the latter is expected to witness a close contest – is also noteworthy.

The outlet noted that Gujarat witnessed a Kejriwal vs Modi tussle – a match-up the AAP leader had resisted ever since the prime minister won his second term in office.

“After the Punjab win this year, AAP is going big again on its national ambitions, even targeting the BJP’s core Hindutva vote. This means the Kejriwal-vs-Modi contest is an imperative, in conditions very different from their 2014 Varanasi poll battle,” the NDTV piece noted.

The BJP, meanwhile, called a meeting of its key office bearers at the BJP headquarters in the aftermath of the results.

The saffron party deployed its big guns including chief ministers and Union ministers in the prestige battle.

Another meeting of party’s winning councillors in the MCD elections has been scheduled.

Polls for 250 wards in the National Capital were held on 4 December with about 50 per cent voter turnout and a total of 1,349 candidates in the fray.

However, the low voter turnout did not prove to be an indicator of pro-incumbency.

Congress, which is mostly focussing on the success of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, was not predicted (in the exit polls) to be a prominent challenger in the recently conducted polling.

This was the first civic election after the fresh delimitation exercise. There were 272 wards in Delhi and three corporations – NDMC, SDMC, and EDMC in Delhi from 2012-2022 that later reunified into an MCD that had formally come into existence on 22 May.

With inputs from agencies

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