Delhi lessons

Delhi lessons

Municipal poll results have wider ramifications for national parties.
Given that Aam Aadmi Party is based in the capital and has ambitions to expand nationally, even perhaps to become the new Congress, the results of the municipal corporation polls in Delhi were always going to have some national implications for political parties. And with BJP registering a comfortable majority in all three municipal corporations in the city ¬ winning 181 of 270 wards ¬ it's time for both AAP and Congress to engage in some serious introspection.
AAP particularly has been hit hard by the results as the local poll, together with the recent Rajouri Garden assembly bypoll where the party came third, was seen as a mid-term referendum on its two year-old Delhi government. In fact, the results confirm that AAP is facing an existential crisis and has lost the elan that had seen it sweep Delhi assembly polls in 2015.
Where AAP seems to have lost the plot is in pursuing relentlessly negative campaigns. The party is yet to evolve out of its anti-establishment roots.
True, playing the underdog did benefit AAP in the beginning. But blaming everybody except itself ¬ including electronic voting machines ¬ comes with a sell-by date.
For AAP to rediscover its political capital it needs to be gracious in defeat, press the reboot button, and start focussing on governance. Meanwhile Congress, relegated to the third position in the municipal polls, needs to get its act together too. That in the run up to the polls senior Congress leaders like Arvinder Singh Lovely left the party shows clear disenchantment with Congress leadership. It's inexplicable that despite former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit continuing to enjoy significant goodwill among the city's electorate, Congress did not rope her in at any stage of the municipal election campaign.
Lastly, BJP might be basking in the glory of its latest electoral victory, but it must realise that the credit for this goes to the continuing Modi wave. For, the general consensus is that BJP's stint in Delhi's municipal bodies has been extremely poor. This is precisely what forced it to field a new slate of candidates for the polls. It is now up to BJP to deliver on raised expectations following its victory, even as both BJP and AAP need to settle their feud on running Delhi.