Mixing bluster with confidence, AAP bets big on Gujarat and Himachal

The jolt of losing its Himachal Pradesh chief and two other leaders to the BJP within 48 hours of Arvind Kejriwal’s maiden roadshow in the state’s Mandi district hasn’t dampened the spirits of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Buoyed by the AAP’s landslide victory in the Punjab assembly polls last month, Kejriwal’s outfit is moving undeterred to emerge as the principal challenger to the ruling BJP in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat that go to polls at the end of this year.

The BJP and the Congress have been traditional contenders for power in both these states. Efforts by various satraps – former CMs Shankarsinh Vaghela and Keshubhai Patel in Gujarat or former Union minister Sukh Ram in Himachal – to turn the bipolar contest into a triangular one through regional outfits have failed in the past. But the AAP believes that past precedents won’t determine its fortunes when the two states go to polls around December 2022.

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Untested territories

Unlike Punjab, where it had developed a support base since its win on four Lok Sabha seats back in 2014 and 20 assembly seats in 2017, Gujarat and Himachal are largely untested territories for the AAP. In Gujarat, barring significant gains in last year’s Surat municipal polls, the AAP has had no tangible political presence. Though the AAP is still the largest opposition bloc in the Surat Municipal Corporation, over half a dozen of its 27 corporators have switched to the BJP in the past few months. In Himachal, which shares a boundary as well as historic socio-cultural ties with Punjab, the AAP’s poll preparations gained momentum only after its 92-seat victory in the 117-member Punjab assembly on March 10.

Yet, the AAP believes that its late entry, lack of popular state-level leaders and nearly non-existent presence at the grassroots won’t dent the party’s prospects in the two states. With the Congress, the BJP’s traditional rival in both states, still struggling with its internal morass, the AAP estimates the upcoming polls to be the best chance for emergence of an alternative political force.

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Moments after the AAP’s Punjab victory, the party’s below-par performance in Goa and its complete rout in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh notwithstanding, Kejriwal reconstituted teams for handling his outfit’s affairs in Gujarat and Himachal.

Sandeep Pathak, the former IIT-Delhi professor who worked behind the scenes on the AAP’s Punjab campaign and got rewarded with a Rajya Sabha berth immediately after the poll results, was assigned Gujarat where he will work alongside the party’s in-charge for the state, Delhi MLA Gulab Singh Yadav. Similarly, Kejriwal dispatched trusted aide Durgesh Pathak and Delhi minister Satyendra Jain to Himachal.

Mimicking BJP’s gimmicks

What’s interesting is how the AAP seems to be taking several leaves out of the BJP’s election playbook; using tactics mastered by the saffron party under the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine.

The AAP has announced a mobile number on which the state’s voters could give a ‘missed call’ to register as members of the party (a gimmick that the BJP has successfully employed in the past). The AAP also announced several routes for its Tiranga Yatras across Gujarat, with the first leg kicked off by Kejriwal and his newly sworn-in Punjab counterpart, Bhagwant Mann, in Ahmedabad on March 12.

Much like the BJP in recent years, the AAP is building its narrative around bombastic claims of imminent victory, declaring that the two legacy parties had done nothing for the electorate in 70 years. Just as the BJP has repeatedly sought votes in the name of Modi, the AAP too seeks to turn the polls into a presidential-style contest with Delhi CM Kejriwal as the party’s poll mascot. The party also plans to project the Gujarat contest as one where Modi’s Gujarat Model of governance is pitted against Kejriwal’s Delhi Model.

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Pathak and AAP’s Gujarat unit chief, Gopal Italia, appropriated another tried and tested BJP trick. Pathak claimed that the AAP, admittedly despite no sustained groundwork in Gujarat, was “poised to win 58 of the state’s 181 assembly seats if elections were held today”. For good measure, the former IIT professor, who the AAP is now projecting as its ‘Chanakya’ (as opposed to the BJP’s Chanakya – Amit Shah), also declared, “the BJP government (in Gujarat) had got a survey done through state intelligence… we have access to the report… It shows AAP winning about 55 seats if elections are held today.”

Eyeing Congress’ votebank

In bad news for the crisis-ridden Congress, a senior AAP leader involved with the Gujarat campaign told The Federal that the party’s focus in the state would be constituencies that have traditionally defied the state’s pro-BJP waves since 1995 and voted for the Grand Old Party. “Aside from the Congress strongholds in rural and semi-rural parts of Gujarat, we will be focusing on urban constituencies that have substantial pockets of Muslim, Dalit, backward caste and lower or lower-middle class voters as these sections have voted for the Congress in the past but realise that the party cannot defeat the BJP,” the AAP leader said. The AAP is also working on an alliance with the Bharatiya Tribal Party, a regional outfit that currently has two MLAs in the Gujarat assembly and holds sway in some tribal-dominated constituencies.

Italia said the party has identified issues on which it will seek votes. “We will expose the sham of the BJP’s so-called Gujarat model by telling people about Kejriwal’s Delhi model. Despite nearly three decades of BJP rule, unemployment and poor education infrastructure are major issues in Gujarat. We will tell the people how the Kejriwal school of politics has changed the face of education in Delhi; how AAP has given lakhs of jobs in Delhi, improved health infrastructure and ended corruption,” he said.

In both Gujarat and Himachal, the AAP is also reportedly in touch with leaders from the Congress and the BJP who are willing to join its ranks, particularly closer to the elections if they are denied tickets by their current parties. Simultaneously, the party is also aggressively courting the local media. AAP sources told The Federal that the party has been in touch with several senior journalists from vernacular media outfits and even offered some of them positions within the party. The induction of senior Gujarati media professional Isudan Gadhvi as Italia’s second-in-command in the AAP’s state unit last June was part of this strategy, said an AAP leader.

The AAP is also desperately wooing prominent Patidar leader and industrialist, Naresh Patel. Though Italia belongs to the Patidar community, AAP realises that he holds little sway over the formidable electoral bloc of the state that is aggressively courted by both the Congress and the BJP. Hence, the AAP’s need to induct Naresh Patel, a well-regarded social figure among the Leuva Patel sub-caste of the Patidars who runs various religious, educational, commercial and philanthropic institutions.

However, as The Federal had reported earlier, Naresh Patel seems more inclined to start his political innings with the Congress that already has as its state working president, Hardik Patel, who was the face of the now defunct Patidar Andolan that had brought the BJP to its knees ahead of the 2017 assembly polls in the state.

Showcasing Delhi model

A similar strategy of highlighting AAP’s model of governance in Delhi – and now Punjab — projecting Kejriwal as the only leader capable to defeating the BJP, showcasing Delhi’s education and health infrastructure as tangible examples of the Delhi model of governance and accusing the Congress and the BJP of “being in cahoots to loot the people” is being employed in Himachal too.

The AAP’s Himachal in-charge, Durgesh Pathak, says the BJP and Congress have done nothing for the people of the state. “Unemployment is still rampant in the state and Himachal’s youth have to go to other states to find jobs. There are no proper hospitals in most towns and locals have to drive long distances to get medical attention even in case of emergency. Similarly, the state doesn’t have good schools or colleges. Only Kejriwal knows how to develop good schools or hospitals. Every Himachali family knows someone living in Delhi and we tell the people that they should ask their relatives or friends in Delhi about how Kejriwal has transformed Delhi with his corruption-free, delivery-oriented government… this is our strength and we will ask people of Himachal to give Kejriwal and AAP a chance,” said Pathak.

The AAP has no credible leadership in Himachal as of now even though Kejriwal and Mann’s maiden roadshow on chief minister Jairam Thakur’s home turf of Mandi was well-received. Delhi’s deputy CM Manish Sisodia had declared that the success of the roadshow had made BJP so nervous that it was planning to replace Thakur with Union minister Anurag Thakur before the elections.

Dramatic flourish

Sisodia’s statement was also a classic example of AAP’s love for dramatic flourish. That there is unease within the BJP over Thakur’s poor performance as the CM and anti-incumbency against his government is common knowledge in Himachal’s political circles. Rumours of the BJP sacking Thakur, just as the party last year sacked his Gujarat and Uttarakhand counterparts – Vijay Rupani and Tirath Singh Rawat, respectively – have been doing the rounds ever since the Congress defeated the BJP in last November’s bypolls for the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and three assembly constituencies.

Interestingly, BJP insiders claim Thakur may have just earned an extension as the party would not wish to feed the frenzy that Sisodia sought to trigger.

AAP sources say the party’s hopes of making significant in-roads in Himachal stem not just from its victory in neighbouring Punjab but also from the assessment that the forthcoming assembly polls are set to see a generational shift in the hill state’s politics. “For decades, the state’s politics has been dominated by figures like Virbhadra Singh (Congress stalwart and former five-term CM), Shanta Kumar and Prem Kumar Dhumal (both former CMs from the BJP). But Virbhadra is no more while Shanta Kumar and Dhumal are no longer central figures of the BJP in Himachal. The elections will therefore see a new leadership and this gives us hope of convincing the people that they must give Kejriwal’s politics a chance. Our candidates will also be chosen keeping this generational change in mind… we will have a good mix of youth and experience because several Congress and BJP leaders also want to join us,” an AAP leader involved with the Himachal campaign told The Federal.

Clear focus

AAP sources said the party will focus on lower Himachal — Hamirpur, Una, Bilaspur, Kangra and some part of the Mandi district — as these areas are adjoining or in close proximity to Punjab. The BJP has traditionally been strong in lower Himachal while the Congress has its bastions in Upper Himachal areas of Shimla, Solan, Sirmaur, Chamba, Lahaul & Spiti.

A majority of the state’s 68 assembly seats – close to 45 constituencies – fall in lower Himachal. AAP believes that high anti-incumbency against the BJP and continuing troubles within the Congress will help the party capture a significant chunk of assembly constituencies in this region.

The AAP is evidently banking on its current buoyancy, following the Punjab verdict, sustaining for the next eight months. Whether its one-size-fits all campaign model that relies heavily on Kejriwal’s self-crafted image as sorcerer who can simultaneously deflate the BJP and the Congress remains to be seen. What is certain, though, is that the electoral rhetoric in the two states is set for an interesting makeover.