Modi and his Indian ruling party face a setback after New Delhi elections
Modi and his Indian ruling party face a setback after New Delhi elections
(about 4 hours later)
NEW DELHI — In a stunning defeat for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s backers, the upstart anti-corruption Common Man Party swept to power in a landslide victory Tuesday in the citywide elections in New Delhi.
NEW DELHI — After India’s most famous anti-corruption crusader, Arvind Kejriwal, quit his post as New Delhi’s chief minister after just a few weeks last year, he was sidelined politically and lampooned as a maverick who couldn’t handle responsibility.
The contest was widely viewed as a measure of Modi’s political clout here.
But his stunning comeback in the capital’s elections Tuesday surpassed the scale of victory predicted in most polls and was a major setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing party. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party won 67 voting districts out of 70 in the legislative assembly, with Modi’s party taking just three.
Supporters of the Common Man Party, wearing their trademark white caps, danced to loud music and waved party flags in celebration at the party’s office in the heart of the capital. When party founder Arvind Kejriwal stepped out, they showered him with marigold and rose petals.
In the weeks before the election, Kejriwal had spent hours with voters in street-corner meetings, shoring up support among the capital’s working class by focusing on issues such as electricity and slum rehabilitation. He also repeatedly apologized for his party’s failed attempt to govern Delhi last year.
[Read: India’s most famous anti-corruption campaigner is now fighting to stay relevant.]
Ultimately, voters were willing to forgive him.
“We did not have money, we did not have the resources. But when you decide to walk on the path of truth, then all the forces of the universe help you,” said Kejriwal, who founded the party, also known as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), two years ago.
“So what if they fell short the last time — a lot of people have very high hopes of them,” said Rajan Kumar, 45, an electricity broker. “They will do better this time. I can tell."
He also claimed the established political groups, including Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), suffered because of “their arrogance.”
On Tuesday, as word of the victory spread, Kumar and other Common Man supporters descended upon the modest party headquarters, dancing, cheering and jamming roads in celebration. When Kejriwal appeared at midday, his supporters showered him with marigold, rose petals and confetti.
“We have to fold our hands humbly and serve the people,” Kejriwal told the crowds. “We can turn Delhi into a city that can be a pride of both the poor and rich people.”
“It is very scary, such a big mandate the people have given us,” Kejriwal said. But he pledged to“turn Delhi into a city that can be a pride of both the poor and rich people.”
Modi congratulated Kejriwal and pledged support.
The Common Man Party promised voters a slew of populist measures if elected, including cheaper electricity, affordable housing, student loans and free WiFi. But in the end, the party’s appeal cut across class lines, a testament to the fact that many remain tired of what party leader Ashutosh called “rampant everyday corruption” and the “politics of the privileged.”
The bitterly fought election for control of the legislative assembly marks the first political setback to Modi's BJP since he became prime minister last May.
"We're middle-class people,” said Madhu, 53, a retiree and housewife. “We need someone who will think like us . . . like a common man, with ‘common’ concerns like ours, about safety for women and children.”
Riding on Modi’s soaring popularity, the BJP had won in a number of state elections in recent months, and they were expected to repeat their success Tuesday — a phenomenon dubbed Modi’s “victory chariot” by the media.
Modi tweeted that after the defeat, he called Kejriwal and assured him of support. But a senior member of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Ravi Shankar Prasad, conceded that it had not “read the mood of the people of Delhi well.”
But Delhi proved to be a tough battle for the BJP because of the appeal of the charismatic Kejriwal, a former tax officer-turned anti-corruption activist. His small party won 67 voting districts out of a total of 70. Modi’s BJP took three, down from 32 in the last city election in December 2013.
Modi remains very popular nationally, but he has been the subject of some criticism in recent weeks for what is seen as excessive foreign travel, as well as his choice of attire during a meeting with President Obama — a showy custom-made suit with his name emblazoned in pinstripes.
The beleaguered Congress party, which was routed after 10 years of national rule by Modi last year, captured none of the districts.
“This is a decisive vote against Prime Minister Modi’s style of functioning,” said Dipankar Gupta, a political analyst and author. “The nine months that he has been the prime minister show no perceptible improvement in everyday lives of people. People are impatient in a democracy and want action.”
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The Bharatiya Janata Party had won in a number of state elections since May by riding on the Modi wave, but that was not the case in Delhi, even though Modi and his top lieutenants were out in force on the campaign trail. Their candidate for chief minister, Kiran Bedi , a 65-year old former police officer, lost in her own voting district.
One television news station called the outcome a “tectonic shift in Indian politics.” The next parliamentary elections, however, are still four years away.
The Congress party, which had been a dominant force in the country’s politics for decades, won no seats in the Delhi election.
“This was the battle between the storm and the candle. The candle of hope is winning,” said Yogendra Yadav, a senior member of the Common Man Party. “How could we even think of fighting such big political parties with so much money? But the people are carrying us on their shoulders today.”
Kejriwal, 45, quit his job as a tax officer to fight for transparency laws in government programs and rose to fame when he spearheaded nationwide street demonstrations against corruption in 2011. In 2012, he formed a political party that won a surprise victory in the Delhi elections in late 2013. But Kejriwal’s tumultuous time at the helm ended after just 49 days.
The election results is something of a comeback for Kejriwal and his group of new supporters. Their last try at running the city government in early 2014 dissolved in chaos after a few weeks.
Now, as Kejriwal and his party prepare to retake the reins of the capital city, voters are expecting they will stick around and govern this time. “Now finally we’ll have some relief in water and electricity bills. Kejriwal will fix that now,” said Phool Jahan, a 55-year-old domestic worker who said that she voted for Modi last year but that her utility bills had risen since then.
Analysts say a chastened Kejriwal — who routinely apologized for his record on the campaign trail — still managed to bring in poor voters and the city’s middle-class, who remain disillusioned over politics in India, where mainstream parties are widely viewed as corrupt, opaque and thriving on manipulation of religious and caste identities.
“Though this is not a referendum on Modi’s national government, but this may be used as a peg to build up criticism against him,” said Manisha Priyam, the India coordinator for election research for the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“The result has shown us that democracy has a natural tendency to throw up alternatives,” Priyam added. “The people may have voted for the BJP and Modi at the national level just last May, but they wanted a local leader on the ground.”
Election analysts said the residents in India’s capital city voted across class lines for Kejriwal. His party promised voters a slew of populist measures if elected to power, including free water, cheaper electricity, affordable housing for the poor, easy study loans and free wi-fi. In contrast, the BJP had said they would turn the teeming capital into a world-class city.
Rajesh Rajamoni, a 27-year old plumber who lives in an impoverished slum of laborers, said he voted for the AAP because he wanted a government that understood the problems of the poor.
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“I have seen many big leaders giving big speeches. But Arvind Kejriwal is an ordinary man, he speaks like us,” said Rajamoni. “Being poor in a big city is not easy. We are always harassed for bribes by the police, by municipal corporation officers. We want a leader who will take on the corrupt.”
The BJP, Rajamoni said, was a party of “rich people, big people.”
To counter Kejriwal’s image as the anti-corruption crusader, the BJP brought in his former ally from the movement, Kiran Bedi, who was India’s most famous female police officer.
But Bedi, 65, failed to connect with many voters, and indeed with the rank-and-file of her own party who resented her as an outsider who was thrust upon them in recent weeks. Some voters in the slum said she spoke to them like a police inspector still.
Social commentator Mukul Kesavan wrote on an NDTV blog item that Bedi spoke with the scolding tone of a teacher and with humorless self-righteousness.
“Poor people suffer the most at the hands of the police, and the BJP made the mistake of bringing in a former police officer as their candidate for chief minister of Delhi,” said the analyst Priyam.
The BJP continued to rely heavily on Modi’s image and put his face on billboards across the city with the tag line: “Let’s march with Modi.” But the campaign styles of the two party leaders sharply diverged.
While Modi flew down in a special chopper from his office to address large public meetings in the city, Kejriwal addressed voters in dozens of small, street-corner meetings and focused on local issues.
[Read: Abandoned as a child bride, wife of Narendra Modi hopes he calls]
As Modi gave grand-sounding stump speeches and wore expensive clothes while hosting with President Obama with round-the-clock media coverage ahead of the polls, Kejriwal quietly worked the crowded lanes of slums wearing, as usual, his wool muffler around his head.
Santosh Desai, a newspaper columnist, wrote on Monday that Kejriwal restored “to politics its feisty localness of spirit,” while Modi continued to be the master of grand “aerial battles.”
Kejriwal, 45, started his early career working for India’s tax service, but became disillusioned by corruption he saw in the Indian bureaucratic and political system. He worked with the city’s poor, demanding greater transparency in government programs for many years before he spearheaded nationwide street demonstrations against rampant corruption in 2011 which, at the time, was called “India’s Arab Spring.”
In 2012, he formed his own political party with some of the activists of the Aam Aadmi Party. Bedi parted ways with him at that time, saying she did not want to be part of a formal political party.
Kejriwal pulled off a surprise victory in the Delhi elections in late 2013 by upsetting a popular three-term chief minister. But his tenure as the city’s boss was controversial. His administration self-destructed in just 49 days after Kejriwal shut down the city center in a protest over police corruption, a debacle that damaged his political career and disillusioned supporters.
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India’s most famous female cop is facing the toughest fight of her life: politics
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