Can AAP's New Strategy Help it Become the Only Party to Defeat BJP Thrice?

AAP has brought in several candidates from other parties, replacing many of its sitting MLAs. What explains this?

How Arvind Kejriwal and Atishi work in the next 4 months will shape AAP's future.

(Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

There are only two states where the Opposition has managed to defeat the BJP twice in a row in a direct fight in the last 10 years - Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi in 2015 and 2020 and the Hemant Soren-led JMM-Congress-RJD-Left alliance in Jharkhand in 2019 and 2024.

AAP is now fighting to defeat the BJP a third time, a feat that no Opposition party has achieved till date.

To achieve this, AAP is pursuing a new strategy - of bringing on board prominent leaders from other parties and shuffling around the seats of some of their own key leaders. This has also meant that a number of existing AAP MLAs, including some prominent ones, will not be contesting the elections.

Why Were Leaders Brought in from BJP and Congress?

Shahdara

Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel announced his retirement from politics. He won't be contesting the elections from the Shahdara Assembly seat. Here AAP has brought in Jitender Singh Shunty, a popular local leader from the BJP.

Shunty is a known social worker and made his mark as an Independent councillor a couple of decades ago. His organisation, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Sewa Dal, is known to perform the last rites of unclaimed dead bodies besides a free ambulance and other social service activities.

According to Shunty, his brand of politics, focused on local community-oriented social service, is in line with AAP's politics.

Seelampur

Another significant entry is that of five-time MLA from Seelampur, Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed. He had won in 1993 on a Janata Dal ticket, 1998 as an Independent and subsequently on a Congress ticket.

Known to be the most prominent Muslim leader in Northeast Delhi, Chaudhary Mateen has consistently championed the cause of communal harmony in the communally polarised area. Since the 1990s, he has been holding Hindu Muslim Ekta Shivir during Kanwar Yatra and other Hindu festivals.

AAP has already announced his son Chaudhary Zubair Ahmed as its candidate from Seelampur, replacing sitting MLA Abdul Rehman, who had been facing flak from locals. Rehman has subsequently joined the Congress and has been given a ticket from the same seat.

AAP had been facing a lot of criticism from Muslims Northeast Delhi due to its alleged silence during the 2020 communal violence. Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed's entry is also an effort to assuage their sentiments.

Prominent Muslim leader from Northeast Delhi, Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed has joined AAP. 

(Aam Aadmi Party Facebook Page)

Seemapuri

In another Northeast Delhi seat, Seemapuri, AAP has brought in Veer Singh Dhingan from the Congress. The seat was represented by former minister Rajendra Pal Gautam, who resigned from AAP and subsequently joined the Congress.

With locally entrenched leaders like Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed, Jitender Singh Shunty and Veer Singh Dhingan in its ranks, AAP is trying to strengthen its position in Northeast Delhi, where it had suffered some reverses in the MCD elections.

Timarpur

On the other side of the Yamuna river from Northeast Delhi, is the Timarpur seat, where senior AAP leader Dilip Pandey has announced his intention to move away from electoral politics.

AAP has been winning this seat since 2013 and it has been a non-BJP since 1998, with the Congress dominating the seat. However, AAP hasn't had an established face there. Since the seat includes Delhi University, in the initial years of AAP, Yogendra Yadav played a key role here. First AAP's MLA here was Harish Khanna and in 2015, it was won by Yadav's aide Pankaj Pushkar who drifted away from the party after Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were expelled in 2015. In 2020, it was won by Dilip Pandey.

The seat's demography has tended to favour AAP as it has university employees, some slum clusters and a fair chunk of Dalit and Sikh voters.

This time AAP has replaced Pandey with former Congress MLA Surinder Pal Singh Bittu, who had won the seat in 2003 and 2008. Bittu had also briefly joined BJP.

Kirari

In Northwest Delhi's Kirari seat, AAP has replaced two time MLA Rituraj Govind with former BJP MLA Anil Jha.

The Kirari seat is dominated by migrants from Bihar and both Govind and Jha are from the same community. Jha had won the seat on a BJP ticket by a massive margin in 2013 - 48,000 votes but lost to Govind by 45,000 votes in 2015. However, even amidst an AAP wave Jha had managed to reduce Govind's margin to just 5,000 in 2020.

Why 2 Senior Leaders' Seats Were Changed

AAP has changed former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia's seat from Patparganj in East Delhi to Jangpura in Central Delhi. Sisodia had won by a very narrow margin of 3000 votes in 2020 against BJP'S Ravinder Negi. Negi has since been pursuing radical Hindutva politics in the area by targeting Muslim shopkeepers.

Sisodia has been shifted to Jangpura, which is potentially a safe seat for AAP but it has its own set of challenges. Jangpura has traditionally been a non-BJP seat - the party has never won the seat. Before AAP emerged, the Congress used to dominate the seat first through veteran leader Jag Pravesh Chandra and subsequently Tarvinder Singh Marwah.

Having a sizable chunk of Sikh, Muslim and Dalit votes, the demography also is in favour of AAP. Jangpura was also one of the few segments in Delhi in which the AAP-Congress alliance was leading in the Lok Sabha elections.

The problem for AAP is that former Congress MLA Tarwinder Marwah has since joined BJP and is likely to be fielded from the seat. He has a good standing among Sikh and Hindu Punjabi voters in the area.

AAP's calculation is that Sisodia being a political heavyweight, may be able be more effective compared to the young sitting MLA Praveen Kumar. In Patparganj, AAP has fielded UPSC coach and educationist Awadh Ojha hoping that his credentials will help counter Negi's communal politics.

Manish Sisodia.

(Photo: PTI)

Former minister Rakhi Birla has been shifted from Mangolpuri to Madipur in similar circumstances. Here Congress heavyweight Raj Kumar Chauhan has joined the BJP and is likely to be the party's candidate in this reserved seat. He was a minister in the Sheila Dikshit government and even after the Congress' decline, he polled 29 percent votes in the seat in both 2013 and 2015. His candidature may have made the battle tricky for Birla and she is said to have shifted to a relatively safer seat Madipur, replacing sitting MLA Girish Soni.

The Big Picture: What's AAP's Strategy?

AAP's success in Delhi so far has had two elements - winning over a section of voters who vote for the BJP at the national level and consolidating the entire anti-BJP vote, a big part of which goes to the Congress at the national level.

Let's look at the arithmetic. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP secured 54 percent votes and the AAP-Congress alliance secured 43 percent (AAP 24 percent, Congress 19 percent). To win Delhi again, AAP needs to retain as much of the consolidated Opposition vote as possible and in addition to this, wean away roughly one in six voters who voted for the BJP.

Its imports from the BJP and Congress need to be seen in this light.

For instance, Seelampur and Seemapuri are two segments where the AAP-Congress alliance secured more votes than the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Since both were in the Northeast Delhi Lok Sabha seat, which was in the Congress' quota, for AAP it became essential to take over the Congress' base in these segments. That's why they have brought on board the Congress' main faces from these two areas - Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed and Veer Singh Dhingan.

Similarly, by bringing in Jitender Shunty and Anil Jha from BJP, AAP is trying to do two things: take over a part of BJP's base in these seats and deprive BJP of their main faces in these areas.

There is another element to this.

In every seat, there are voters who vote as per party preference or preference for the CM or PM candidate, as well as those who vote based on the popularity of the local candidates contesting.

In the past one decade, elections in Delhi had become increasingly de-localised - Lok Sabha polls have been a mandate in favour of PM Narendra Modi while Assembly elections have been a mandate in favour of CM Arvind Kejriwal. Popularity of individual candidates have tended to matter less.

However, this time AAP senses that in some seats, it may need the additional vote that candidates bring and hence the emphasis on entrants from other parties. Kejriwal not being CM at present also makes a personalised campaign a bit tougher.

Though it is a party that came out of a protest movement against the political class, AAP has fielded political turncoats even in the past.

Minister Imran Hussain and Tughlakabad MLA Sahi Ram were both BSP councillors earlier and are now established within AAP for about a decade. Then Old Delhi stalwarts Shoaib Iqbal and Parlad Singh Sawhney joined AAP ahead of 2020 elections and now their sons are also coming up in the party ranks.

However, these leaders joined the party at a time when it didn't have many established faces. This time the acquisitions are different both in terms of scale as well as the fact that they are replacing existing AAP faces.

AAP is in for a tough battle as the BJP, even in defeat, has displayed a consistent ability to retain and even increase its vote share - it secured 32 percent votes in 2015, 38 percent in 2020 and 39 percent in the 2022 MCD election. In the MCD poll, it was just 3 percentage points behind AAP at 42 percent, with the Congress a distant third at 11 percent.

Keeping BJP below 40 percent and Congress below 5 percent is AAP's main challenge.