Fall Of Kejri 'Wall': How AAP Lost Its Reformist Mojo And Delhi’s Trust

Losing election is the only way to make politicians realize that they were on the wrong track. Victory is intoxicating and it dulls senses.

The darbaris and sycophants are always there to praise you to the skies. But elections have proved that voters are wiser and keep giving shock treatments.

Photo Credit: PTI

Arvind Kejriwal thought that people are only concerned about freebies. Give them basic facilities free and they would not mind your acts of commissions and omissions. He forgot that the middle class had supported the AAP because it promised change and relentless fight against corruption.

The AAP has no ideology, barring this perception. This class supported Narendra Modi for the Centre and Kejriwal for Delhi. The support base was the same. They gave him two consecutive terms in office in the hope that the situation would change.

While Modi kept occupying the mind and imagination of the middle class, Kejriwal lost the ground inch by inch. The liquor scam due to which he went to jail and the baseless arguments of vendetta politics did not cut much ice.

Documentary evidence that has come out establishes that there was something seriously wrong. One after another senior ministers in the AAP government went to jail on the charges of corruption.

One may recall during the corona crisis in Delhi, Kejriwal was giving liquor to Delhi residents 'buy one get one free'. The entire health infrastructure had collapsed.

If the Central Government and Amit Shah had not intervened, the situation could have been worse. The way Manish Sisodia and others tried to do politics over the movement of migrant population was there for all to see.

Delhi is a cosmopolitan city where people come from different parts of the country and settle here. The city has got choked due to rising population. The roads and the bridges do not match the growth of population. Everyday hundreds of cars join the race to congest the already chaotic traffic. Metro is not enough. Innovative ideas must be implemented to tackle the crisis.

It needed initiative on the part of the chief minister to clean up river Yamuna and better integration of the larger National Capital Region (NCR). What is needed is not the territories but better and free movement of goods and services. Politicking over power did not give time to launch positive movements.

Even riots got politicized. Kejriwal's stand on CAA and Shaheen Bagh protests did not go well with the largely non-communal electorate. Whatever the reason, the streets of Delhi cannot be held for ransom for months because you do not agree with the government. The role of AAP during Delhi riots was partisan.

Delhi has also got the status of one of the most polluted cities in the world. Earlier Kejriwal used to blame Punjab and Haryana for parali burning and increasing pollution in Delhi during September-November. No initiative was taken even after the AAP got its own government in Punjab. The city government looked helpless.

The benefit of having a party that has come to power due to agitational politics was lost as the chief minister got a taste of better life in his Sheesh Mahal and luxury cars. The workers could have agitated to get the polluting factories closed.

The sewers falling in river Yamuna during its 25 KM run in the city could have been blocked. But none had perhaps the time for even these simple solutions.

The AAPians had become a part of the system when Kejriwal recruited them in the government. Life became easy for them and the task of transformation as promised in Kejriwal's book Swaraj was lost forever.