That the Aam Aadmi Party, which was born out of the India Against Corruption campaign led by social activist Anna Hazare, has grand political ambitions was never a secret. The party had given up power in Delhi after just 49 days of running the government following the 2013 assembly elections, as it wanted to contest all the Lok Sabha seats during the 2014 general elections. Its leader Arvind Kejriwal, who had dislodged Sheila Dikshit as Delhi chief minister, felt the support the party received in the Delhi polls would get replicated in the Lok Sabha elections.By himself taking on then Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial face Narendra Modi in Varanasi and sending his then trusted lieutenant and poet friend Kumar Vishwas to fight against Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, Kejriwal also tried to send across a strong message – that he was serious about his claims and intent. Only his calculations went wrong. He knew that Delhi was a mini India, encapsulating people from across the country. But he did not realise that India was not a larger Delhi, each state and their people have different issues and complexities to deal with.The result was a whitewash for AAP across the country barring Punjab, where is won four Lok Sabha seats. Even in Delhi, the party failed to even come close to a win in any of the seven seats. Ever since that defeat, AAP has been conscious about its foray into electoral politics in various states. Its leaders claim that they learnt their lessons.‘Corruption’, ‘governance’ still remain key issuesRecently, when Kejriwal announced that his party would contest the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2022, some of these past memories quickly returned. He mainly spoke about corruption in the state, saying, “UP’s dirty politics and corrupt leaders are blocking the state’s development. Locals have given a chance to all the parties. But every government has set new records of corruption.”This sounded so much like his campaign of 2014, but the difference this time around is that he also spoke about the claimed success of his Delhi model of governance, when he said: “If government hospitals in Delhi can improve, people here can get free electricity 24*7, why can’t the same happen in UP? Why don’t the schools in neighbouring state meet the required standards when Delhi’s government schools can set the benchmark? For women’s safety, we’ve installed CCTVs everywhere but crimes against women continue to rise in UP.”This is where AAP thinks it can score. It believes that by showing UP how things changed under it in Delhi, it would be able to make political inroads. And this is something it clearly lacked in 2014, when it went into the general elections with no experience of governance.Also read: Not Knowing Where Else to Go, AAP Is Moving Further to the Political RightDelhi’s governance model not enough to win pollsHowever, AAP’s past performance in assembly elections in many other states like Haryana, Rajasthan, Goa and even Punjab to some extent has shown that its clamour about the way it governs Delhi is not enough to win it polls. The closest it has come to power in any state outside Delhi has been in Punjab – where in the 2017 assembly polls it came second behind the Congress by winning 20 seats in the 117-member House and garnered 23.8% votes as around 3.66 million people voted for the party.The same year AAP had also shown a lot of promise in Goa – where some opinion polls had, like in Punjab, even projected that it would emerge as the single largest party in the 40-member assembly. But AAP failed to even open its account in the state and garnered only 6.3% votes as around 57,000 people voted in its support.Leadership crisis to blame for several lossesThese losses of AAP in Punjab and Goa, where it recently won a seat in the zila panchayat elections, offer important learnings for the party. It went into polls into these states without having a clear ‘chief ministerial face’. Remember, Delhi is the only state it has won thus far and in all three elections – 2013, 2015 and 2020 – Kejriwal was the face of the party.In Haryana and Rajasthan assembly polls too, the party lacked a credible face to lead it. In case of Rajasthan, Vishwas – after his falling out with the party’s central leadership – was sent there almost as a ‘punishment’ and this reflected in the results. The party contested 146 of the 200 seats in 2019 but got only 0.38% of the votes as a total of 136,345 people voted for it in the state.In Haryana too, after Yogendra Yadav’s exit from the party, AAP was not able to make much headway under Navin Jaihind and in the 2019 assembly polls, though it fielded 46 candidates for the 90-member House, they only got 0.46% of total votes polled as only 59,839 votes were polled in favour of the party.Will Sanjay Singh be the party’s face in UP?This shows the importance of having a strong leader to lead the party into any assembly election. And this is where AAP is hoping that under its Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, who is also one of the founder members of the party, it stands a good chance.Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh along with party leaders meets the family members of the Dalit woman who died after being allegedly gang-raped in Hathras. Photo: PTISingh, who is a member of AAP’s highest decision-making body, the political affairs committee, has been working on the ground in Uttar Pradesh for a long time now. In fact, he is a social activist who hails from Sultanpur in the state and as such is well-aware of the nuances and the demands of the state.One of the most popular faces of the party, both on the ground and on social media, he has been nurturing UP for the past several years. He was also one of the most vociferous to oppose the introduction and passage of the farm bills in Rajya Sabha recently.Caste, religion play an important role in UPHowever, while Singh’s presence answers the leadership issue, AAP now also has a lot of answering to do when it comes to its stand on the issues of caste and religion – which in Uttar Pradesh cannot be simply brushed under the carpet. Unlike Delhi, where it primarily has had BJP as its opposition party and it managed to bag a large number of Muslim, Dalit and Sikh votes in the bargain, in Uttar Pradesh AAP would also have to battle Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which retains its support among the Dalits, and the Samajwadi Party (SP), that is still the party of choice for most Muslims and Yadavs.From past experience it is clear that AAP will have to pull out more than ‘corruption’ and ‘good governance’ from its hat in order to make an appeal to the masses. It would also have to answer now for its conduct during and after the Delhi riots and the soft-Hindutva approach which many opposition parties now accuse it of.Much explaining to do on CAA, Delhi riotsIt is not only the visits to temples by its leaders during Lok Sabha elections or the visits to the ashrams of various spiritual leaders by its leaders in Uttarakhand recently that show a change in the party’s approach towards religion; AAP now will also need to explain why it did not table various reports of the Delhi Minorities Commission in the Delhi assembly, what it did on complaints of minorities following the Delhi riots and the unclear stance of its leaders on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.Finally, Uttar Pradesh is a big state and AAP would need to woo crores of voters to its side in order to make any impact. In Delhi, getting under 50 lakh votes was enough for it to win 62 of the 70 seats in the assembly polls this year. But UP is really big. In the 2017 polls, BJP had polled over 358 lakh votes, SP over 243 lakh and BSP over 192 lakh votes. So AAP should know it has a lot more to do or else it would end up like a blip as it did in Haryana or Rajasthan.
