AAP factor in Delhi polls: Congress has an epiphany, Rahul has doubts

With just over a fortnight to go before Delhi votes for a new government, the Congress central leadership has had an epiphany but remains unsure of how to act on it.

Having spent the past decade struggling for political relevance in the city-state that was once its citadel, it has finally dawned on the Congress that the Aam Aadmi Party’s continuation in power in Delhi is the biggest hurdle to its own electoral revival.

What continues to perplex the party high command, particularly Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, though, is just how stridently the Congress should take on the AAP in the February 5 Delhi assembly polls.

Rahul’s padyatra cancelled

After steering a lacklustre and directionless campaign so far for the Delhi polls, the Congress high command had, last week, agreed to heed the pleas of its Delhi leadership and shift into an aggressive canvassing mode this week. Rahul was scheduled to lead a padyatra (foot march) in the New Delhi assembly segment on Monday (January 20) and follow it up with another in the Kalkaji constituency two days later.

The move would have been an unambiguous battle-cry against Delhi’s ruling party. AAP convener and former CM Arvind Kejriwal is seeking re-election from the New Delhi seat where he faces a triangular contest against Congress’s Sandeep Dikshit and BJP’s Parvesh Verma while the Kalkaji constituency has chief minister Atishi facing off against the Congress’s Alka Lamba and the BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri.

However, the padyatra was called off at short notice and there was no word either on Rahul’s scheduled campaign in Kalkaji. Dikshit, a former two-term MP and son of Delhi’s longest serving CM, the late Sheila Dikshit, had hoped that Rahul’s padyatra through the New Delhi seat would give his fledgling campaign the boost it needs. Instead, Rahul’s last-minute cancellation came as an embarrassment for Dikshit who had little else to say except that “it has been rescheduled and not cancelled; we will plan it after January 26”.

Also read: Delhi polls | It's raining freebies with AAP and BJP trying to outdo each other

Reasons behind Rahul’s no-show

Through Monday, Congress leaders involved in the Delhi campaign were ill at ease explaining Rahul’s no-show. “The padyatras have not been cancelled. We are planning them in a better way and we are confident that not only Rahulji but Priyanka Gandhi and the Congress president (Mallikarjun Kharge) will also join the campaign very soon,” Delhi Congress chief and the party’s candidate from the Badli assembly seat Devender Yadav told The Federal.

Yadav added, “Rahulji was in Patna on Saturday for a series of meetings, including a Samvidhaan Sammelan, and on Tuesday (January 22), he will be in Belgaum for the Jai Samvidhaan rally that was supposed to happen on December 27 but was re-scheduled due to the demise of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There is another Jai Samvidhaan rally in Mhow (Madhya Pradesh) on January 27 which Congress leaders from across the country will attend. Once these scheduled rallies are over, we are planning padyatras, road shows and public meetings of Rahulji, Priyankaji and Khargeji in Delhi. In the meantime, other senior leaders from across the country are going to campaign for different candidates.”

Listless Congress brass

So far, Rahul has made only one outing for his party’s Delhi campaign while Kharge and Priyanka have remained absent. On January 14, Rahul addressed a Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhaan rally in Delhi’s Seelampur. He slammed Kejriwal saying there was “no difference” between the former Delhi CM and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that the AAP and the BJP follow the same strategy of repeatedly making “fake promises” to voters.

Delhi Congress leaders imploring Rahul to get more involved with the poll campaign and launch a more focused diatribe at the AAP were told that the Rae Bareli MP’s campaign schedule was being finalised. Now, the party’s Delhi candidates have to wait till at least January 28 before Rahul turns up to campaign by when they’ll be left with just a week until the ‘silent period’ before polling starts on February 3.

Also read: Delhi is a 'fixed fight' between AAP and BJP: Cong's Pawan Khera

Lacklustre campaign

Sources involved with planning the party’s poll strategy told The Federal that the Kharge-Rahul-Priyanka troika is now expected to focus on fewer than two dozen assembly constituencies as opposed to the Delhi Congress’s request to have the high command campaign across at least 18 to 20 seats. The constituencies where Kharge, Rahul and Priyanka are likely to campaign, collectively or individually, are New Delhi, Kalkaji, Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk, Kasturba Nagar, Patparganj, Wazirpur and Seemapuri, among others.

In other constituencies, the party will press Sachin Pilot, Salman Khurshid, Akhilesh Prasad Singh, Pawan Khera, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Supriya Shrinate and Ajay Kumar Lallu among others into the campaign. Independent MP from Bihar’s Purnea Pappu Yadav is also expected to campaign for Congress candidates in constituencies that have a sizeable population of Purvanchali voters.

Rahul’s concerns

Sources say the Congress’s Delhi leadership as well as a section of AICC leaders have impressed upon Rahul the need for going all out against the AAP in the upcoming polls “even if this results in a fractured mandate or the BJP coming to power in Delhi in the short term”.

“There can be no revival of the Congress in Delhi as long as the AAP remains in power. This was our stronghold for 15 years and we lost it overnight to the AAP; our entire base shifted to them after 2013 and ever since we have made one blunder after another that has only contributed to the AAP growing stronger and expanding at our cost in Punjab, Gujarat and other places... the only way to stop the AAP from taking over our political space further is to dent it in Delhi. Delhi is AAP’s foundation, if they fall here then they will crumble everywhere else too,” a senior Delhi Congress leader told The Federal.

Rahul, though, has appeared unsure of ceding to this pressure from his party colleagues. A party leader close to Rahul said, “He has his own concerns... anyone who knows Rahul’s politics is aware that he is simply not wired to do anything that indirectly helps the BJP; he knows we are not strong enough in Delhi to form the government on our own but we can chip away AAP’s votes which could help the BJP to come to power; so naturally there is reluctance on his part in allowing this... then there is his role and responsibility as LoP; the Congress and AAP are still together in the INDIA bloc and though the Congress has been the biggest victim of AAP’s rise, Rahul perhaps thinks it is important to prioritise INDIA unity against BJP or Congress’s revival in Delhi.”

Also read: Congress left alone as INDIA allies SP, TMC back AAP in Delhi polls

Party “can’t afford” Rahul’s “idealism”

Another Delhi Congress leader asserted that while he respects Rahul’s “idealism”, the party “can’t afford it”. This leader, however, pointed out that it was “wrong to blame only Rahul” for the Congress’s “confused strategy” in Delhi.

“Some of our leaders who are today among Kejriwal’s most vocal critics and have even called him anti-national, were the ones who pressed our central leadership back in 2013 to give outside support to AAP when it first came to power. That decision finished the party but those leaders were never held accountable,” the Delhi Congress leader, a former MLA of multiple terms, said.

He added, “The same leaders did nothing in the past 10 years to rebuild the Congress in Delhi or to stall the alliance with AAP in the (2024) Lok Sabha election... today, the Delhi voter yearns for the governance Delhi had when Sheila Dikshit was CM but he doesn’t trust the Congress because he thinks we can go back to allying with the AAP any day so his choice is between AAP and BJP; we don’t figure anywhere... can you blame only Rahul for all this? Why should our Delhi leaders not be blamed equally?”

Last-ditch effort by Delhi leaders

The Congress’ poll strategists and Delhi unit leaders, sources said, have held several rounds of discussions with Kharge, Rahul and Priyanka in recent weeks to convince them that if the party began an aggressive campaign against the AAP even at this late stage, the Congress could gain at least a 2-3 per cent rise in its vote share, especially among Muslims and Dalits.

“There are 12 assembly seats reserved for Dalits in Delhi and seven seats where Muslims can swing the results. It is these seats that we should focus on aside from the few other constituencies where we have strong candidates. If we pull out all stops, we stand a chance to finally win a seat or two in the Assembly this time after having drawn a blank in the past two elections. Even if we win one seat and finish second in some important constituencies, it will be a huge morale booster for our workers in Delhi but the high command has to step in immediately. We can’t wait for the last week of campaigning and then expect people to take us seriously,” said a member of the Congress’s campaign war room.

Also read: Delhi polls | Coalition dharma holds back Rahul from taking Kejriwal head-on

Former Congress MLA Asif Mohammad Khan, whose daughter Ariba Khan is the party’s candidate from the Okhla seat, told The Federal, “The AAP today has been totally exposed... Those who came into politics claiming they will rid the system of corruption are all out on bail in corruption cases; governance is at its worst because of the constant fighting between the AAP and the LG... We have a whole range of issues on which the Congress can campaign and these have been conveyed to the high command; if even after all this we can’t win our vote back then I am afraid we will never revive in Delhi.”